Proposed Rule Would Drastically Restrict Chimp Research

New rules for labs that use chimpanzees as test subjects may be on the horizon. From the New York Times blog: "The Fish and Wildlife Service proposal came in response to a petition filed in 2010 by the Jane Goodall Institute, the Humane Society of the United States, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and other groups. It would require permits for interstate commerce involving any chimpanzees, or for what the law calls 'taking,' which could be anything from harassment to major harm to something as simple as obtaining a blood sample. And those permits, Mr. Ashe said, would be granted only if the action could be shown to benefit the survival of the species. If the new rule is enacted, it will be a major success for animal welfare groups, a grave disappointment for some scientists and another sign of the profound changes over the last half-century in the way animals are used and imagined in science and popular culture." The L.A. Times lauds the proposed rule change in an editorial.

Comments

Valid science isn't the only yardstick.

[Immerman]

> The only real question is the validity of that science.
Also the moral price of that science. The discussion is about chimps instead of rabbits because the evidence all points to chimps being almost as sapient as us, the rabbits... not so much. And sapience is pretty much the only thing we can point to when trying to claim humans are "better" than other animals. Take away that yardstick and we may as well be experimenting directly on humans.

Re:Valid science isn't the only yardstick.

[Immerman]

>The day when almost all research can be done this way is not far off.

Maybe not on geologic timescales...

Sure, we'll have simulated test subjects suitable for high school and maybe even undergraduate level "experiments" before long. But we're probably a long way away from being able to simulate even the simplest animals on a molecular level, and anything short of that has limited utility to original research. Sure, if we simulate all the known chemical responses then we can get a first-order approximation of reactions to screen for any unanticipated side effects within the realm of known responses, and millions of mice and grad student hours will be saved from time-consuming preliminary experiments (presumably I can set my experiment running and come back in the morning to see in painstaking detail the possible progress of a ten-year exposure). But that won't actually tell you anything about the effect on poorly understood processes, which at present are still most of them.