PCRM Physicians Committee
November 2017
"Eventually the Institute of Medicine did indeed conclude that there was no need for experimentation on chimpanzees."
Read The New York Times article about moving chimpanzees out of
laboratories and into sanctuaries -
Lab Chimps Are Moving to Sanctuaries—Slowly
Getting to this point was a big job. It actually started with a group of
chimpanzees in New Mexico who were going to be taken out of retirement and
put back into research. We were alerted by local activists, and we worked
with then-Governor Bill Richardson and several members of Congress to halt
the transfer as soon as we could. The next step was to convene an Institute
of Medicine panel to opine on whether chimpanzees were needed at all in
research. We had to do a lot of work behind the scenes to kick out bad panel
members, but eventually the Institute of Medicine did indeed conclude that
there was no need for experimentation on chimpanzees. With that in hand, it
was reasonably easy to convince the NIH to pull the plug on its chimpanzee
research, and the retirement process began.
So, in the scheme of things, it was a rather quick victory, even though each
piece of it took a lot of doing. It was very much a group effort—and that
includes you. We could not do this work without your generous support.
Thank you!
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