Tell NIH Director to Send the Alamogordo Chimpanzees Home

FROM  Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM)

ACTION

Tell Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Institutes of Health, to have a heart and return the 14 Alamogordo chimpanzees to New Mexico.

Sign an online petition

And/Or make direct contact:

Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D.
The National Institutes of Health
9000 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, Maryland 20892
phone (301) 496-4000

INFORMATION / TALKING POINTS

I am writing to ask that you return the 14 chimpanzees recently moved to the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio, Texas, back to Alamogordo, N.M., where they belong.

Since arriving at the federally funded Alamogordo Primate Facility in 2001, none of these chimpanzees have been used in experiments. Prior to that, they were used for years in cruel experiments. The psychological trauma experience by chimpanzees in laboratories is similar to human symptoms. They exhibit signs of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Significant genetic and physiological differences between great apes and humans make chimpanzees a poor research model for human diseases. As you know, we still have no vaccine for HIV or hepatitis C, although tens of millions of dollars have been spent over many decades on chimpanzee-based research for these diseases.

Please have a heart this Valentine's Day and return Levi, Rosie, Randy, and the 11 other chimpanzees back to Alamogordo, N.M. Now is the time to join the rest of the world and stop experimenting on chimpanzees--please start by returning the 14 chimpanzees to Alamogordo.

Thank you for everything you do for animals!