US to limit chimp research
2011-12-16 12:15
Washington - The US government says it will accept strict new limits on using chimpanzees in medical research, after Institute of Medicine scientific group said that experiments with humans' closest relative should be a last resort.
The National Institutes of Health agreed that the species deserves special consideration, and that science has advanced enough that chimps seldom would be needed to help develop new medicines.
NIH Director Francis Collins temporarily barred new research funding involving chimps, and said a working group will review about 37 projects involving the animals to see if they should be phased out.
While Europe formally banned research on great apes in 2010, the US has continued to allow medical studies on chimps ranging from HIV/Aids vaccines, hepatitis C, malaria, respiratory viruses, brain and behaviour.
While controversial, these studies are also quite rare, making up just 53 of the 94 000 active projects sponsored by the National Institutes of Health in 2011, or 0.056% of all federally funded US research.
Outcry
An NIH proposal to reintroduce several dozen retired chimpanzees into research colonies in 2010 caused mounting public outcry and led to the review of chimp research by independent medical experts at the Institute of Medicine.
"The committee concludes that while the chimpanzee has been a valuable animal model in the past, most current biomedical research use of chimpanzees is not necessary," said the IOM in its report.
The NIH should therefore limit the use of chimps to biomedical research in which there is no other model available that could not be performed ethically on humans, and would hinder progress against life-threatening conditions if halted.
Chimps are still necessary in the development of vaccines against hepatitis C, for short-term continued study of monoclonal antibody research against bacteria and viruses, for comparative genome studies and behavioural research, the IOM said.
When chimpanzees are used for these ends, the studies should "provide otherwise unattainable insight into comparative genomics, normal and abnormal behaviour, mental health, emotion, or cognition", the report said.
The apes' genetic similarity to people has long caused a quandary. It is what has made them so valuable to scientists for nearly a century, but at the same time raised ethical and emotional concerns.
In addition, all experiments must be performed "in a manner that minimises pain and distress, and is minimally invasive".
Research
US research on chimps is mainly conducted at four facilities: the Southwest National Primate Research Centre, the New Iberia Research Centre at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, the Michale E Keeling Centre for Comparative Medicine and Research of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre, and the Yerkes National Primate Research Centre at Emory University.
As of May, there were 937 chimpanzees available for research in the US. The US government supports 436 of them, and the rest are owned and used for research by private industry.
The IOM noted that the NIH called for a moratorium on breeding chimps for research back in 1995, and as a result the US federally funded research population will "largely cease to exist" by 2037.
EU facilities have not conducted any research on chimps since 1999, and a formal ban on using great apes in research - including chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans - was issued last year.
However the report noted that the EU ban has apparently led to some foreign ventures coming to the US to use chimps for research.
The IOM found evidence in the last five years of 27 studies on chimpanzees in the US that were funded by either non-US-based companies or non-US-based academic investigators from Italy, Japan, Denmark, Belgium, France and Spain.
Most were studying hepatitis C therapy, vaccine development or monoclonal antibodies, it said.