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NIH Restricts Use of Chimpanzees in Labs
vikingpower writes "The U.S. National Institutes of Health on Thursday suspended all new grants for biomedical and behavioral research on chimpanzees and accepted the first uniform criteria for assessing the necessity of such research (full report here). Those guidelines require that the research be necessary for human health, and that there be no other way to accomplish it. A San Francisco Chronicle article points out why chimpanzees are so often used for medical research, as they are evolutionarily the closest to human beings. One may wonder if Europe and Asia are to follow the U.S.?"
I guess they'll have to go back to using grad students.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
We are actually following the EU on this.
Look at all the trouble those super smart rats caused. It's probably not a good idea to be doing that stuff with something that starts out even smarter, like a chimp.
Wait. Is NIH different from NIMH?
... the most recent remake of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes might be enough to make them rethink things a little...
They have just seen the new Planet of Apes.
One may wonder if Europe and Asia are to follow the U.S.?
In Europe, medical tests on apes (Chimpansees, Gorillas, Oerang utans and one other race whose name eludes me at the moment) are already illegal and have been for a few years (even longer in certain member states). Fairly serious restrictions also apply to tests involving other primates.
An article from The Independent 2 years ago announcing the official legislation
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/new-eu-rules-on-animal-testing-ban-use-of-apes-2077443.html
Look, I have disagreements with Tea Party supporters too .. but to outright ban them from labs? That doesn't seem right to me.
Non sequitur. NIH banned the use of evolutionary closer relatives of humans, didn't say anything about lower species.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
In germany at least (I did not check other EU states) experiments on human like apes (chimps, gorrilas etc.) are forbidden anyway. For all other apes exist reguations and restrictions ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Here's an idea - if you're going to shit on scientists for using animal testing for research, maybe next time you go to the hospital for a procedure you can decline anything that is the result of animal testing. Which, by the way, is practically all of modern medicine.
I have a couple friends who worked in some of these labs. They said that you very quickly:
1) Felt sorry for the monkeys, because it is a pretty awful life.
and
2) Hated the fuckers, because they are meanest, nastiest things on the planet. They'll try to lure you to the cage then bite your arm off, if they could. Not that they don't have reason.
They also said that they have to do any transfers of animals in the middle of the night because of death threats by animal rights activists.
All that said, I have no problem with having to ethically justify testing on apes as a last resort, not something that you can just do whatever the hell you want to. I just hope these regulations actually do that, instead of just being another weird hoop to jump through.
The director's comments, and the findings of the advisory panel, make clear that NIH will continue to support work that can only be done in chimpanzees: monoclonal antibody therapies, research on comparative genomics, and non-invasive studies of social and behavioral factors that affect the development, prevention, or treatment of disease. Generally all non- or minimally-invasive work. The moratorium on all chimpanzee grants is only to give NIH time to develop processes for making sure grants comply with those restrictions.
I mostly agree, but by the same token, the NIH is publicly funded. So, while its great to say "look how many lives saved" is great, and it wins my support, but to justify using public funding, I think you need more than that. If people have objections, those objections are legitimate as long as they are being made to contribute, even indirectly.
Also, I must note, the summary says the NIH is simply no longer funding these studies. That is distinct from banning the research. Private funding is still possible.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Like this:
[3000 pages of obtuse, meaningless, but impressive-looking technical mumbo jumbo] Therefore, there is no other way.
It's not a total prohibition. It's a new requirement that you must show that the usage of pan troglodytes and possibly pan paniscus (common chimp and bonobo respectively), is required for the research and that there is no other alternative. You must also show that the research is valuable and worth the cost (in addition to the grants own merits). You currently already need IRB approval/exemptions for human subject research (and animal trials for that matter), but this is to make sure you really need a chimp for your research when another model might work (many IRBs wouldn't make this a requirement for the research - they'd worry more about the treatment, conditions, etc... along the way).
Furthermore, this is the NIH which funds research grants, and not the FDA which approves preclinical trials on animal subjects (they aren't clinical trials until you use humans) for new drugs and medical devices. There's still plenty of chances for chimps to get experimented on and sacrificed for R&D. These new rules should just tighten up how often people pick chimps as a model. Not that expense, care, attachment, PR, and other factors haven't already moved the ball along. This'll have more impact on the focused-to-oblivion researcher who wanted to test his thingy on something as close to human as he could, not worrying about any of the above factors because he's got his grant and that lets him keep ignoring the rest of the world.
I think you have a fair point, but is that really that much different from blocking stem cell research funding? I guess I put them both in the same category. A lot of people believe in the separation of church and state, I happen to believe in the separation of science and politics.
If one makes the case that it's unethical to use Chimps as test subjects then it follows that it's unethical to use any animal as a test subject. This is exactly what the animal rights whackos want.
I don't buy the "they're too similar to people" argument. I don't care how similar to people they are, they're not people. A person's ethical concerns are limited to the realm of people. There is no valid normative theory that draws a line between primates and the rest of animals. There are the theories the animal rights people rely on - such as that anything that can 'suffer' has ethical rights - but this theory is weak for various reasons ('rights' are undefined, predators become immoral beings, keeping pets becomes slavery, etc.). This attitude is the result of pussies raised on Disney cartoons who fall in love with anthropomorphic animals and fail to distinguish them from real animals.
This is similar to pro-lifers pushing through legislation to make a certain type of abortion illegal, like the 'partial birth abortion.' Even though it's not common, especially compared to standard 'procedures' (i.e. take a pill and bleed that shit out), they can use graphic pictures to appeal to one's emotion. But the goal isn't to stop partial birth abortion, which was typically only used in medical emergencies anyway, the goal was to take a step toward stopping all abortion. Similarly, this is just a step toward banning all animal testing, which is stupid because advances in medicine rely on it. No doctor recommends a woman wait until late in her pregnancy for an abortion, but in certain cases 'partial birth abortions' were used to save women's lives. No scientist uses a chimp when he can use a rat, but in certain cases the chimp's similarities to humans is what makes them valuable test subjects.
So, given that this restriction provides an exception for the very cases in which chimps are already allowed as test subjects, how does this change anything? It doesn't, except it gives the pussy vegans a sense of moral victory and motivates them to continue their zealous quest of unreasonableness.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
I agree with you, personally, but most people that I have found who criticize this type of research are under the impression that scientists can ultimately accomplish the same ends without actually testing it on living creatures... that they can study the effects of such things on paper and through actual experimentation, as well as computer simulation, and that those processes will reflect what goes on inside of a living body. They have mistakenly adopted the view that the differences between theory and practice are of no real significance.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
So your friends hated the monkeys because they got aggressive when locked in a tiny box and tortured for reasons they don't understand? Imagine that. You can't reasonably imply that anyone using anything which is a product of animal testing is a hypocrite, because it is far too ingrained in society to be avoidable. That'd be like saying anyone who ethically opposes slavery or stealing from native Americans should leave North America, because so much of what we have is a direct result of the advantages those practices gave us. The point is that this is 2011 and we have more modern methods for many things which don't require testing on animals. When alternatives exist, it's unethical to not use them. That's what the NIH themselves are saying, and they're not exactly a bleeding-heart animal welfare society.