The Hill News

A recent blog post by the president of a facility that experiments on chimpanzees grossly misrepresented the scientific and ethical reality of performing research on our closest genetic relatives. This discussion is one surrounding the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, a bill that has gained momentous support in the 112th Congress, and for good reason.
 
Only a handful of researchers do any form of experimentation on chimpanzees. The rest are warehoused in inadequate housing at great taxpayer expense.
 
Following recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report findings that chimpanzees are not necessary for current medical research, laboratories have had to change their talking points from “chimpanze! es are essential” to “what if we might need them one day.” This isn’t their concern about human health. This is a fight to keep the huge taxpayer-funded grants they receive to warehouse the chimpanzees in facilities that are noncompliant with recent IOM report criteria.

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