Sally Anne Ryan paints Chimps to raise money to help Cheetah from a former bio-medical research lab

What a talented artist and a good heart.

PRIMATE PIC: Sally-Anne Ryan
Again, Save the Chimps is my favorite!



A MONMOUTHSHIRE animal artist is fundraising to transport chimps to safer environments.

Sally-Anne Ryan, 37, of St Maughans, is raising funds for Save The Chimps to transport a chimp named Cheetah from a former bio-medical research laboratory in New Mexico to the world’s largest chimpanzee sanctuary in Florida.

This is after Cheetah was rescued by the charity from the Coulston Foundation laboratory where he had undergone 400 liver biopsies leading to him having three full blood transfusions.

It is legal to carry out testing on chimps in the US.

When he was rescued, Cheetah was found trapped underground in a cell nicknamed the “dungeon” with hundreds of other chimps.
It costs around $2,500 to transport each chimp which Ms Ryan has raised through painting pictures of the chimps at the sanctuary and giving the charity free copyright to sell the paintings. She also competed in the Reading half marathon at the weekend.

Although she has now raised $2,500 to transport Cheetah, who was the first chimp Ms Ryan painted a portrait of, she is still continuing the fundraising.

This includes helping with a Wales ape and monkey sanctuary appeal to have a chimp named Bili transported from a zoo in Bulgaria back to the UK.

This will cost £5,000 and Ms Ryan is offering to paint five pet portraits to the value of £200 each to help with the fund.

Anyone interested can visit www.gretalovesmabel.com or e-mail info@gretalovesmabel.com
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Research Labs are NOT where Chimpanzees belong- NIH

Dr. Hope Ferdowsian is director of the Research Policy Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine:

Rosie was chemically immobilized 99 times by laboratory workers. The 29-year-old chimpanzee was finally granted a reprieve from testing in 2001, but the government recently moved her and 13 others back into laboratory cages. As a physician, I am concerned about the millions of dollars spent on decades of experiments using chimpanzees, which inflict untold pain and suffering upon these highly intelligent animals and have generally turned out to be a poor method of studying human diseases.

A few months after the 14 were transferred from Alamogordo, NIH granted 186 chimpanzees remaining at the New Mexico nonresearch facility a reprieve from further experimentation while the Institute of Medicine conducts an in-depth analysis of chimpanzee experimentation. But Rosie and her 13 companions remain at Texas Biomed, a controversial laboratory with a poor animal care record, where they have already been subjected to multiple liver biopsies and other procedures that require chemical immobilization.

The United States is the only industrialized nation still using chimpanzees for invasive experiments. I hope NIH will focus on modern methods that offer the most hope for human health —a nd allow these chimpanzees to live out their remaining years in the peace of a sanctuary.
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HSUS Wants NIRC to halt potential government contract fraud

By: Humane Society of the United States

WASHINGTON (March 15, 2011) – The Humane Society of the United States has filed legal petitions with the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services Tuesday requesting investigations and legal actions to halt potential government contract fraud at the New Iberia Research Center, a primate laboratory located in New Iberia, La. and part of the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.

As outlined in the petitions, The HSUS has amassed public records suggesting that NIRC may be breeding federally-owned chimpanzees for use in invasive research in violation of the terms of a multi-million dollar grant agreement between NIRC and a division of the National Institutes of Health called the National Center for Research Resources. NIRC has received the grant annually since 2000, to the tune of more than $10 million.

"This appears to be an open and shut case of government fraud under the federal False Claims Act," said Jonathan Lovvorn, vice president and chief counsel for animal protection litigation at The HSUS. "The Attorney General should investigate this matter, terminate illegal breeding at NIRC, and take legal action to recover any taxpayer monies squandered by this facility."

Documents obtained by The HSUS demonstrate that during the past 10 years, NIRC has produced at least 123 infant chimpanzees, some of whom were prematurely and cruelly torn away from their mothers. The documents also show that an additional 14 infants died as a result of trauma by adult chimpanzees possibly due to negligent management practices and overcrowding at the NIRC facility. The surviving 123 chimpanzees may languish for the next 50 years or more in laboratories that are totally insufficient to meet their basic needs, while NIRC stands to profit from its breeding program by leasing the young chimpanzees for invasive research.

Evidence presented in the petition shows that by alleging extensive chimpanzee birth control practices and withholding information about young chimpanzees born at its facility, among other things, NIRC may have misrepresented its breeding program to the NCRR in grant progress reports and application materials. These misrepresentations could be violations of the federal False Claims Act, which could entitle the NCRR to recoup up to $30 million in damages due to the law's trebling, or tripling provision.

The HSUS is asking the Department of Justice to take enforcement action against the laboratory for fraudulent use of federal money, and is requesting that the Department of Health and Human Services cease funding the laboratory. The HSUS is also requesting that the Department of Health and Human Services immediately send all federally-owned chimpanzees residing at NIRC to permanent sanctuary with appropriate funding.

The full text of The HSUS's legal petition to the Department of Justice can be downloaded here. The full text of The HSUS's legal petition to the Department of Health and Human Services can be downloaded here. The necropsy reports of the 14 infants who died of traumatic injuries can be found here. B-roll is available to the media upon request.

Facts:
* There are approximately 1,000 chimpanzees in six laboratories in the United States; approximately 500 of these chimpanzees are owned by the federal government.

* Under the False Claims Act, the government can collect treble damages for fraud by government contractors, which means that NIRC could be required to pay $30 million for repeatedly violating its grant agreement with NCRR while certifying compliance with the breeding moratorium.

* The contract between NIRC and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, titled "Leasing of Chimpanzees for the Conduct of Research," is for a total of $7.8 million and is scheduled to end in September of next year, but is up for renewal this coming September.

* Each chimpanzee born into a laboratory can live 60 years and cost the federal government as much as $1 million during his or her lifetime. Seven of the 123 chimpanzees born at NIRC are now owned by, and are the responsibility of, the federal government.

* The HSUS revealed the results of an undercover investigation conducted at NIRC in 2009, including distress caused by lack of enrichment and socialization, severe psychological distress, and inadequate veterinary care.

* The National Institutes of Health has announced that the National Academy of Sciences will be conducting a review to the use of chimpanzees for research purposes, further strengthening the argument to immediately stop the flow of new chimpanzees into the laboratory system.

To learn more about chimps in research, visit Here.humanesociety.org/chimps
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Nothing has come out of testing Chimpanzees for diseases-It needs to stop!!!!

The activists say the researchers are using the animals to study the effects of bioterrorism agents on chimpanzees.

One of the chimpanzees is 29-years-old, has lived as a test subject, and in a captive environment with thousands of other chimpanzees, and has been chemically immobilised 99 times by researchers since being brought out of a 14-year retirement, activists said.
Subjecting chimpanzees to deadly chemicals and diseases is illegal in the European Union, and the US is the only industrialised country that still allows researchers to do so.

The US National Institutes of Health recently stopped dealing with the Texas-based research laboratory that procured the 14 elderly chimpanzees.

The animals are being used to study the effects of deadly substances like anthrax, and deadly viruses, such as HIV and Ebola, according to campaigners.

John Pippin, a Dallas-based doctor and member of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), said that testing on chimpanzees was not scientifically useful to humans.

He said that, as yet, no Hepatitis C vaccine, AIDS vaccine, or malaria vaccine had come about from chimpanzee testing, despite the fact that these three diseases required the use of chimpanzees for testing.

He said that researchers had been given free licence to study disease in chimpanzees for decades, without such research yielding anything of use to the general public.

Pippin said that he believed that the transfer of the chimpanzees to the laboratory constituted an abuse of the federal Administrative Procedure Act.

About 1,000 chimpanzees remain in captivity in US laboratories.

Breeding or importing chimpanzees into the US is against the law.

In a related study, British and African researchers found that 59 chimpanzees studied in a Zambian sanctuary displayed the use of humour and laughter during social bonding.

The researchers said their findings suggested that chimpanzees used forms of communication and self-expression that were more complicated than people might think.
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Doing experiments on Chimpanzees is nothing but wrong!!!!!

I don't understand why the government can't just change the classification of Chimpanzees here in the US. Presently they are classified as "threatened" though wild Chimpanzees are classified as "endangered". When any animal is classified as "endangered" experiments are not permitted to be done on the animals. For example, Orangutans, Gorillas, and Bonobos are all classified as "endangered" and that's why no one is allowed to do experiments on them. If they would include the Chimpanzees is this classification than they also would not have to endure a lifetime of pain and suffering. It's that easy, just change the classification!!!!! So why hasn't the government done this yet? Because the government is the labs! We the tax payers pay for this abuse and it's time for the whole public to speak up, not just animal welfare and animal rights people, everyone needs to help!

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A BATTLE by animal rights activists to save 14 chimpanzees from science and medical testing may well sound the death knell for all US medical experiments on the primates.

Rights and ethics groups led by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) have seized on the case, which pits them against a powerful federal research agency, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and revives debate the usefulness, as well as the ethics, of experimenting on humankind's closest living relatives.

Dallas doctor John Pippin, a PCRM senior adviser, said the NIH "acted unlawfully" in June and July 2010 when it transferred four female and 10 male chimps to a controversial laboratory in San Antonio, Texas, for use in invasive experiments.

Pippin and several other experts who are members of the non-profit PCRM filed a legal petition seeking immediate return of the chimps to their home at a non-research government facility in Alamogordo, New Mexico, where they lived with 186 other chimpanzees.

..Moving the animals "was arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of agency discretion, and in violation of the federal Administrative Procedure Act", Pippin told AFP in an interview.
The animals sent to the Southwest National Primate Research Center (SNPRC) are "old and sick," Pippin said. The research, he added, "is scientifically useless and also horribly inhumane".

The experts cite Rosie, a 29-year-old chimpanzee who was chemically immobilised 99 times by researchers in years of invasive experiments, as one of the 14 brought out of retirement and sent to Texas.
Chimpanzees have been used in research for decades, but many scientists have dismissed their usefulness in AIDS and malaria research, and their effectiveness in studies of hepatitis and other infections is in dispute.
After the European Union's 27 member states banned primate experiments last year, the US is now the only industrialised nation which has not done likewise.
Contacted by AFP, the NIH had yet to make a comment on the case as of late on Friday - but there are signs it is reacting to mounting pressure over the chimpanzees.

Activist groups and the then-governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, managed to convince NIH to suspend transfer of other chimpanzees from Alamogordo, according to Pippin.

NIH has agreed to await the findings of the independent Institute of Medicine, which has now launched what NIH acknowledged is "in-depth analysis to reassess the scientific need for the continued use of chimpanzees to accelerate biomedical discoveries".

It could take up to two years for the findings of the institute's study to emerge.

The PCRM notes the institute that oversees the Texas primate centre endorses primate studies involving "bioterrorism agents and other deadly pathogens" including Ebola virus and anthrax, in addition to work on AIDS and other infections.

Pippin and others insist the chimp research has no scientific value.
"The proof is that we don't have any hepatitis C vaccine, we don't have any AIDS vaccine, malaria vaccine," he said.

"We don't have an effective treatment for any of these diseases that have been studied on chimpanzees for decades."

But some researchers insist the experiments are vital, and vigorously defend lab research on animals such as mice and chimpanzees to advance medicine.

"We've made a lot of progress in research on hepatitis using chimpanzees," SNPRC director John VandeBerg told the Washington Post this week.

VandeBerg acknowledged that other developed nations no longer use chimpanzees for medical experiments, but stressed European societies "made a decision that was driven by animal rights advocates," and that European scientists still come to the US to do research on primates.

"They need chimpanzees just as badly as we do," he said.

About 1000 chimpanzees remain in US laboratories, including 500 at NIH facilities. Their number has decreased in recent years as breeding chimpanzees in captivity is now banned and importing them is illegal.
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A livetime of pain, loneliness, solitude, sickness and boredom is what Chimpanzees suffer in Government Labs

(Media-Newswire.com) - The last time Samantha Elaine Struthers saw her friend Lennie, he was hunched over, alone in a cage at an Alamogordo, N.M., research lab then known as the Coulston Foundation. The once warm, animated chimpanzee, whom Struthers had groomed and been groomed by many times, stared listlessly down through the bars, studying the bare concrete floor.
Because he had been infected with HIV, Struthers had to approach him wearing a white protective suit, gloves, goggles, a surgical cap, and a mask. Not until she spoke did he recognize her and show glimpses of the old Lennie—stomping his feet, banging on the cage, making buzzing noises. But, clearly desperate to escape his isolation, he also made uncharacteristic submissive gestures, grinning repeatedly and whimpering. Plaintively, he reached through the bars.
“It was really heartbreaking,” says Struthers, who on that day 14 years ago was director of behavioral sciences at the Coulston Foundation but now believes the animals’ social and psychological needs cannot be met in labs. “He’d be like my age, like around 50 now.… I never saw him on those lists that they said went to sanctuaries.”
Lennie never found his freedom; unbeknownst to Struthers, he died of a heart attack in 2002.

But in January, nearly 190 chimpanzees still at the Alamogordo facility got a reprieve with the help of former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and others: The National Institutes of Health said the chimps will not be made available for invasive tests while an independent review of chimpanzee research is conducted.

Elsewhere in the U.S., about 800 other chimpanzees continue to languish in laboratories, even though they have proved poor models for research on human diseases and demand for them as test subjects has dwindled.
Struthers is among several hundred scientists and former lab workers who support efforts to end biomedical research on all chimpanzees, ban breeding to provide more chimps for labs, and retire the 500 federally owned animals to sanctuaries—where they would receive more humane care at lower cost to the government.
Seeking to codify these changes, The HSUS is working to get the federal Great Ape Protection Act reintroduced this year. In the previous session of Congress, the bill had broad bipartisan support. Many cosponsors were won over by a 2009 HSUS investigation that documented more than 300 alleged Animal Welfare Act violations at the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana.

The HSUS also recently released records showing that the center was violating an NIH ban on breeding federally owned chimps—and that 14 infant chimps have been mauled to death since 2000, says Kathleen Conlee, HSUS director of program management for animal research issues. The HSUS is asking the government to investigate and immediately end taxpayer-supported breeding there.

Conditions at New Iberia remind Rachel Weiss, president of the Laboratory Primate Advocacy Group, of her mid-1990s experiences taking care of chimpanzees at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. Ask Weiss why people should support the bill, and she tells the story of a chimp named Arctica, a veteran of vaccine and HIV research who had grown old and mean within Yerkes’ windowless confines, pacing about in her cage.
“She had steel gray hair,” says Weiss. “… She would grab you and try to scratch you through your gloves. She would spit in your face.”

Six years ago Weiss learned that the surviving chimpanzees from Arctica’s group had been released to Chimp Haven sanctuary in Louisiana. Weiss went to visit them, and there was Arctica, transformed: “She got up on the fence and she put her belly up to the fence. And she screamed, and she cried.… She was a whole different person.… She was dark. And she didn’t look mean anymore. She was happy.”

The Great Ape Protection Act would release hundreds more chimpanzees to finally enjoy a decent life. Show your support for the Great Ape Protection Act.
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Emily Deschanel is fighting for the lives of 14 Chimpanzees used by NIH

She plays a forensic scientist on the hit Fox show “Bones,” but Emily Deschanel helps stop crimes in real life, too: the actress and animal lover is currently fighting for the lives of 14 chimps being used for testing by the National Institue of Health.

Deschanel sent the NIH a letter after learning that they plan to send 14 aging chimpanzees from the Alamogordo Primate Facility (a rehab and retirement facility for chimps used in testing) to the Southwest National Primate Research Center. The research center, based in Texas, has a “long history of animal abuse” according to Deschanel’s letter.

“Each individual chimpanzee has his or her own story,” wrote Deschanel. “As you know, their stories are all filled with pain and suffering. But you have an opportunity to give these 14 chimpanzees’ stories a happy ending.”

The chimps won a recent victory when the NIH suspended plans to move a huge group of 186 chimps from the rehab facility to the research center. However, the fate of the 14 chimps is still in question.

Deschanel’s strong support is no surprise: she has been heavily involved in animal rights cases in the past, is an outspoken vegan (along with her sister, “500 Days of Summer” star Zooey Deschanel), and even won the “Humane Advocate Award” from the Humane Society.

It’s great to see all of these stars standing up for chimps: Pamela Anderson and Woody Harrelson have recently written letters on the behalf of chimpanzees subjected to testing. With any luck, those 14 chimps will get to live out their lives in their home in New Mexico.
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Budget Ammendments Part 2 Chimpanzees

--Congressman Dan Burton of Indiana is anxious to see that no money is used to gather free-roaming horses or burros, except when absolutely necessary.

--As if to top Burton's interest in the animal kingdom, Maryland Rep. Roscoe Bartlett is aiming to see that no funds should be used for grant agreements or contracts that allow or encourage the breeding of chimpanzees.
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Anjelica Houston speaks out about 200 Chimps housed at Alamogordo

I recently read, with great happiness and relief, that nearly 200 chimps housed at the Alamogordo Primate Facility on Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico have won a temporary reprieve. Their planned transfer from Alamogordo, where they've been held since 2001, to another site in San Antonio, where they would likely be used for invasive research on a hepatitis C vaccine, has been postponed -- for the time being.

The Alamogordo colony traces its lineage to the Air Force's space chimp experiments in the late 1950s. Animal rights advocates and elected officials, including Jane Goodall, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Animal Protection of New Mexico, fought against the transfer of the chimps, and pushed for a National Academy of Sciences review of policies related to the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research. It is this review that is expected to delay the transfer for approximately two years.

However, simply delaying the transfer is not enough. These chimps have already endured decades of captivity, solitude, and invasive testing, and deserve to live out the rest of their days in peace.

Many of the Alamogordo chimps -- who should not be confused with the 266 chimpanzees the organization Save The Chimps (STC) rescued in 2002 from the Coulston Foundation, who are safe and will never be returned to biomedical research -- bear the scars of years of invasive biomedical research. They have been cut, prodded, caged, and isolated from their peers for decades.

There are many of us who question whether primate research has even yielded any substantive breakthroughs. I believe it is a source of shame for the United States that we are currently the only developed country that continues large-scale confinement of chimps in laboratories, according to the Humane Society of the United States.

Taxpayer dollars being used to relocate the chimps, construct new housing in San Antonio and provide for their daily care in the laboratory should instead be used to fund their lifetime care in a sanctuary, such as the remarkable sanctuary in Florida that Save the Chimps has created. Save the Chimps can now accommodate 300 chimpanzees on 12 three-acre islands of grass, palm trees, hills, and climbing structures, allowing the chimps to run and roam, visit with friends or find a quiet corner to relax, bask in the sun or curl up in the shade. The islands give the chimps choices and control over their own lives, choices that were lacking during their years of confinement in small cages. I had the privilege of narrating a video about Save The Chimps and its history and the work they are doing is truly phenomenal.

Save the Chimps and other wonderful organizations fighting for the welfare of chimpanzees cannot continue their efforts without public support. I encourage everyone who cares about animal welfare to contact their representatives on behalf of the Alamogordo chimps, requesting that they be retired permanently to a sanctuary, with funding provided for their lifetime care. They should also read about the Great Ape Protection Act, pending federal legislation that would retire about 500 federally owned chimpanzees currently in laboratories to permanent sanctuary.

There is no one else to speak for these chimpanzees -- it is up to us to fight for them. While we can't undo the horrific acts that were inflicted on them, we can all help write a much happier ending to their story.
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The truth behind Ham the Chimpanzee

I am so glad that PETA has decided to write this article. All I have been reading is about Ham the HERO? It's been in the new's now for a week and all have been fluff stories. Fluff stories do not tell the truth all of the time, or have hidden facts that aren't written or they just don't know the truth, the whole truth. Ham only lived to be 26 years old. Chimpanzees normally live to be between 40-50 years old. How sad and lonely was Ham, to have given up on life at such an early age? What a shame, what a crime, so so sad.Thank you PETA.

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Fifty years ago this week, a young chimpanzee was launched into space on a suborbital flight that lasted just a little over 16 minutes. Chimpanzee number 65 was chosen from a group 40 captive chimpanzee candidates for the mission—one that left him crammed into a space capsule that would partially depressurize during its short flight.
While his flight was declared a success by NASA, it was preceded by months of pain and followed by years of lonely isolation for the baby chimpanzee, who was given the name "Ham" (after the acronym of the Air Force medical facility where he was cruelly trained) after his return.

What very few people at the time knew was that Ham had been captured in the jungles of West Africa by animal trappers and torn away from his family at the age of 2. He was subjected to 18 months of "training" in which he received electrical shocks to the soles of his feet when he failed to respond correctly in tests and had restraints placed on his neck, torso, and limbs for extended periods.

After completing his space mission, Ham was sent to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., where this highly intelligent and social animal lived in lonely isolation for 17 long years. He was then transferred to the North Carolina Zoo, where he died at the age of 26—roughly half the life expectancy of chimpanzees living free in the wild.

That was 50 years ago, and you would think that NASA would have advanced beyond the archaic and fundamentally flawed science of cruel and irrelevant experiments on animals in its quest for space travel. Think again.

As recently as a few months ago, NASA was moving full steam ahead with a plan to blast dozens of squirrel monkeys with harmful doses of radiation. Then they would be isolated in cages and subjected to years of behavioral experiments in order to measure the damage caused by the radiation, which often includes cancer, loss of motor control, brain damage, and early death. But thanks in large part to a slew of PETA protests as well as e-mails and phone calls from PETA supporters and some high-profile support-including former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao as well as April Evans, a NASA aerospace engineer who quit her job over the proposed plan—NASA grounded its ill-conceived scheme.

Besides the cruelty inherent in animal experimentation—whether the excuse is to test a new perfume additive or to conquer outer space—it is also bad for humans. That's because the often vast physiological and anatomical differences between humans and other animals renders the retrieved data dangerously unreliable.
You can mark the sad anniversary of Ham's voyage into space and keep the pressure on those responsible for cruel animal experiments by pledging to be cruelty-free and getting active for animals who are suffering in laboratories.
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Help end Chimpanzee experiments by signing the petition, be their voice

The people tried to get this law passed after the Charla Nash/Sandra Herold/ Travis attack but it ended in the Senate, on environment and public works. It had 6 sponsors.

This is our time as a nation to stand up for our wonderful Chimpanzees and be their voice. "Stop torturing us", we don't deserve it!
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Targeting: The U.S. Senate


Started by: PCRM Legislative Fund

Many chimpanzees have spent decades in laboratories. These laboratories are allowed to keep chimpanzees in cages the size of a kitchen table, deprive them of normal social interaction, and repeatedly subject them to invasive procedures. In addition, only 15 percent of chimpanzees living in laboratories are used in research. The other 85 percent are simply warehoused for potential future use.

The Great Ape Protection Act (S. 3694) would end invasive research on the more than 1,000 chimpanzees in U.S. laboratories. The bill would also release these federally owned chimpanzees to permanent sanctuaries where they would be allowed to live out their lives in peace.

Chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates are used in medical research because of the assumption that they are closest to humans in physiology. Yet nonhuman primates are profoundly different from humans at the genetic and molecular levels, where disease processes and treatment take place. As a result, chimpanzee research is not only inhumane, but also ineffective in finding cures for human disease.
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Fifty years ago Ham the Chimpanzee went up in space

Fifty years ago, there was a space race -- a race the United States was losing to the communists.
Enter a hero, named Ham. The chimp would become the first hominid launched into outer space. And Ham wasn't just a passenger. He was taught to push a button once the light for re-entry came on. His mission set the stage for the one Alan Shepard would make May 5, 1961, aboard Freedom 7.

Marvin Grunzke of Montgomery, once an Air Force aeromedical specialist, holds a photo of Ham, the first chimp to be launched into space. Grunzke helped train Ham. (David Bundy Advertiser)

Monday is the 50th anniversary of when Ham the "astrochimp" launched into suborbital space inside a Mercury capsule.

And the chimpanzee's trainer, Marvin Grunzke -- a retired Air Force colonel and Faulkner University professor -- will dis­cuss his work and experiences Monday at Dalraida United Methodist Church.

"Nobody had been in space, so nobody knew anything," Grunzke said.

But at the time, John F. Kennedy had became president, and announced that the country would make "space our project," said Grunzke, 87, "and that we're going to the moon.

"What was significant about it was, we had just sent a missile up that had difficul­ty carrying a basketball-sized space lobe," he said. "So our capability for space was pretty dramatic."

In October 1958, Grunzke and his wife, Eunice, lived at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Grunzke was working in an "unusual environments program," testing people and subjects in all types of environmental conditions.

One evening, Grunzke witnessed Sput­nik -- although he wasn't sure whether it was Sputnik, or Sputnik 2, which carried Laika, a Soviet space dog.

The dog became the first animal to or- bit the Earth and the first orbital death.

"They had enough missile pow­er to send that into space," Grunzke said. "And we didn't."

At that time -- the late 1950s -- there were only five people working in NASA, and they needed help. So the government approached the Air Force.

Grunzke was then an Air Force major and aeromedical specialist at Wright Patterson, and was request­ed by NASA to transfer to New Mex­ico to be a key trainer in the "ani­mals in space" program.

After Grunzke worked for a cou­ple of years to help develop training and data recording equipment and to train different animals, the chimp was selected and trained for space travel experimentation be­cause the chimpanzees share com­mon physical attributes with hu­mans.

But there wasn't enough power in the capsule to carry anything too heavy, so the chimp could not weigh more than 30 pounds.

It was an exciting time for Grunzke, whose design develop­ments -- including the chimp's chair, a restraint system, and even a pellet dispenser to hold treats -- took longer to complete than it did to train chimps, which only took a couple of weeks.

"They needed the chimps to have full movements, and only re­strained them at the knee and an­kles," Grunzke said. "We needed to assure the subject would respond, and reward them for good behavior.

"All of these things reflected the fact that we had to combine new technology and subjects new to us. We worked hard so we were able to stay ahead."

Grunzke said they developed two programs.

One, was a "continuous avoid­ance action" in which the chimp was required to continuously press the lever on a consistent basis.

"And they developed a nice schedule," he said. "They just sat there and kept pressing the lever. But another thing is ... we wanted to test to see if they had a good reflex response.

"So we developed another lever with a light over it, and it would come on in random intervals and the subject would have a quick time to respond. So they would be work­ing the right-hand lever on a con­tinuous basis and the left-hand le­ver would be on a single basis and (they) wouldn't respond to it except for when that light came on so we could test reaction times."

This helped researchers test their response time and their re­flexes. Both were important be­cause in both instances subjects were responding to avoid punish­ment. If needed, the punishment was saucer-type plates in the chimp's feet that would send a slight electric shock if needed.

They never failed.

"I don't have any regrets, be­cause I know that there were things we had to do," Grunzke said of the punishment possibility. "There were things we had to do for the be­havior to be maintained."

The researchers had to learn whether living things -- and even­tually a human being -- could han­dle the rigors of space, said Grunzke, a professor of physiologi­cal psychology and behavioral sta­tistics at Faulkner University for the past 15 years.

"We could see the subject was re­sponding, and working according­ly," he said.

At one point during the short mission, though, Ham experienced 16 forces of gravity -- now, astro­nauts experience only three to four forces of gravity.

"When you have that kind of force, we learned we could literally do this," Grunzke said. "It showed them that man could do this as well.

"Because of the similarity be­tween the chimp and the human, we could draw an extraction from that and show this could be a simi­lar situation for humans."

In the end, Ham's suborbital flight lasted 16 minutes and 39 sec­onds, and while the capsule he was in suffered a partial loss of pressure during the flight, Ham's space suit prevented him from suffering any harm.

"As a result of that, a kind of mis-programming of the Ham mis­sile, we were able to gain some very valuable information about what humans could or could not do un­der very adverse acceleration and deceleration issues," Grunzke said.

When first approached to help with the animal in space program, Grunzke was excited.

"If we stop to think about it, and you have to project yourself back to think about it -- (back then we didn't) even have the capability to send a grapefruit-sized (object) into space, and we were going to send animals into space," he said. "And they would be a precursor to man."

This was so exciting to Grunzke that he designed a program that demonstrated that animals could be trained to steer a missile.

"I did that because if we wanted to shoot a space flight to the moon, we would maybe have to steer the missile," he said. "The whole pur­pose was that we could steer a cap­sule into the atmosphere. The time­frame was such that we were just developing transistors. Everything that we did was on big relay racks" -- designed to program the sched­ules so he could switch and vary the schedule."

Grunzke considers himself gen­erously blessed.

"I always say I have been gener­ously blessed," Grunzke said. "There's not a whole lot that I did, but the Lord watched out for me.

"What we did was minimal things, but it opened the door."

After Grunzke worked for a cou­ple of years to help develop training and data recording equipment and to train different animals, the chimp was selected and trained for space travel experimentation be­cause the chimpanzees share com­mon physical attributes with hu­mans.
But there wasn't enough power in the capsule to carry anything too heavy, so the chimp could not weigh more than 30 pounds.

It was an exciting time for Grunzke, whose design develop­ments -- including the chimp's chair, a restraint system, and even a pellet dispenser to hold treats -- took longer to complete than it did to train chimps, which only took a couple of weeks.

"They needed the chimps to have full movements, and only re­strained them at the knee and an­kles," Grunzke said. "We needed to assure the subject would respond, and reward them for good behavior.

"All of these things reflected the fact that we had to combine new technology and subjects new to us. We worked hard so we were able to stay ahead."

Grunzke said they developed two programs.

One, was a "continuous avoid­ance action" in which the chimp was required to continuously press the lever on a consistent basis.

"And they developed a nice schedule," he said. "They just sat there and kept pressing the lever. But another thing is ... we wanted to test to see if they had a good reflex response.

"So we developed another lever with a light over it, and it would come on in random intervals and the subject would have a quick time to respond. So they would be work­ing the right-hand lever on a con­tinuous basis and the left-hand le­ver would be on a single basis and (they) wouldn't respond to it except for when that light came on so we could test reaction times."

This helped researchers test their response time and their re­flexes. Both were important be­cause in both instances subjects were responding to avoid punish­ment. If needed, the punishment was saucer-type plates in the chimp's feet that would send a slight electric shock if needed.

They never failed.

"I don't have any regrets, be­cause I know that there were things we had to do," Grunzke said of the punishment possibility. "There were things we had to do for the be­havior to be maintained."

The researchers had to learn whether living things -- and even­tually a human being -- could han­dle the rigors of space, said Grunzke, a professor of physiologi­cal psychology and behavioral sta­tistics at Faulkner University for the past 15 years.

"We could see the subject was re­sponding, and working according­ly," he said.

At one point during the short mission, though, Ham experienced 16 forces of gravity -- now, astro­nauts experience only three to four forces of gravity.

"When you have that kind of force, we learned we could literally do this," Grunzke said. "It showed them that man could do this as well.

"Because of the similarity be­tween the chimp and the human, we could draw an extraction from that and show this could be a simi­lar situation for humans."

In the end, Ham's suborbital flight lasted 16 minutes and 39 sec­onds, and while the capsule he was in suffered a partial loss of pressure during the flight, Ham's space suit prevented him from suffering any harm.

"As a result of that, a kind of mis-programming of the Ham mis­sile, we were able to gain some very valuable information about what humans could or could not do un­der very adverse acceleration and deceleration issues," Grunzke said.

When first approached to help with the animal in space program, Grunzke was excited.

"If we stop to think about it, and you have to project yourself back to think about it -- (back then we didn't) even have the capability to send a grapefruit-sized (object) into space, and we were going to send animals into space," he said. "And they would be a precursor to man."

This was so exciting to Grunzke that he designed a program that demonstrated that animals could be trained to steer a missile.

"I did that because if we wanted to shoot a space flight to the moon, we would maybe have to steer the missile," he said. "The whole pur­pose was that we could steer a cap­sule into the atmosphere. The time­frame was such that we were just developing transistors. Everything that we did was on big relay racks" -- designed to program the sched­ules so he could switch and vary the schedule."

Grunzke considers himself gen­erously blessed.

"I always say I have been gener­ously blessed," Grunzke said. "There's not a whole lot that I did, but the Lord watched out for me.

"What we did was minimal things, but it opened the door."

Story Credit Here and video

14 Chimpanzees are still in danger of being experimented on

Woody Harrelson Tries to Stop Medical Research on Chimpanzees


Opinion by PETA

(23 Hours Ago) in Society / Animal Rights

Woody Harrelson has a heart for animals that's as huge as his list of acting credits. Now, he's teaming up with PETA to help 14 chimpanzees who have been yanked from retirement and sent to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR) in Texas to be used in invasive and painful infectious disease experiments.

As you may recall, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) originally planned to transfer 202 "retired" chimpanzees to SFBR but shelved this idea following pressure from former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, members of Congress, PETA and other animal protection organizations, and tens of thousands of PETA supporters. However, 14 chimpanzees whom NIH had already transferred to SFBR are still imprisoned at the facility.

This morning, Woody sent a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and NIH Director Francis Collins urging them to "extend the same mercy" to these 14 chimpanzees.

Writes Woody, "These aging chimpanzees have been imprisoned for their entire lives. They have endured decades of violence and torment, having been used in everything from space experiments to high-velocity seat belt tests. Only in the last few years have they enjoyed bedding, fruit, toys, the touch and companionship of other chimpanzees, and freedom from the knife. Will you please return the 14 chimpanzees at SFBR to these simple pleasures and allow them to continue the rehabilitation that they have more than earned?"

Will Woody's letter convince these decisionmakers to do the right thing? We'll keep you posted. In the meantime, let's add our voices to the chorus calling for these chimpanzees' retirement.

Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post
Story Credit Here

This is what the SFBR has to say about what they do:
SNPRC houses more than 160 chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). The Center is one of only five large research centers in the United States with the specialized experience and facilities to care for these great apes.

Chimpanzees have been used as models for infectious disease research, and were critical to the development of vaccines for Hepatitis A and B. Currently, their most extensive use is in developing and testing vaccines and drugs for Hepatitis C.
Most chimpanzees live in enclosures with an indoor heated area, and an outdoor area with climbing structures. Some also have regular access to a large, grass-covered playground. Images of the chimpanzees show their environments and common enrichment items.

Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research initiated a breeding colony of chimpanzees in 1970. Several years ago we suspended the breeding program.
You can read about SFBR Here

Where is Ham the Chimpanzee used by NASA now?

This was just a horrible thing to do. Gosh they couldn't get any human volunteers for this?

Ham the Chimp, astronaut (July 1956 – January 19, 1983)
The first primate launched in space, Ham was also the first African astronaut, having been born in Cameroon. The only African human to have been in space was South African “space tourist” Mark Shuttleworth, in 2002.

Ham was only given his name upon successful completion of his 17-minute journey into space, as NASA didn’t want any potential dead animals in space to have a cutesy name. Although officially known as “Chimp 65” during his mission, he was informally known by his handlers as “Chop Chop Chang”.

Upon his death, Ham’s flesh tissue was removed from his body by being placed in a tank of dermestid beetles. His skeleton is currently on show at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, alongside a display of the skeletons of American Civil War soldiers.
Dom Passantino
Story Credit here

NIH has confirmed in writing that 186 Chimpanzees will not be moved

Alamogordo Chimpanzees Will Remain at Nonresearch Facility While Institute of Medicine Reviews Usefulness of Experiments

WASHINGTON—The National Institutes of Health has confirmed in a written statement that 186 chimpanzees at the Alamogordo Primate Facility in New Mexico will not be moved this year to a Texas facility, where they would have been subjected to invasive experiments. The transfer is being put on hold as the Institute of Medicine conducts an in-depth review of the merits of chimpanzee experimentation.

Over the past six months, the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) has worked alongside former Gov. Bill Richardson, Animal Protection of New Mexico, and others to urge the federal government to keep the chimpanzees permanently out of the laboratory.

The oldest chimpanzees at the Alamogordo Primate Facility will especially benefit from this reprieve. Flo, Guy, and James were born in 1957, 1959, and 1960, respectively, and they have not been used in experiments for about a decade. Rudy is relatively young, but he is very ill and at risk for sudden cardiac death. Heart disease is the most common cause of death for captive chimpanzees, and the heart disease affecting many of the Alamogordo chimpanzees is well documented.

“As the Institute of Medicine reviews the scientific literature, it will find that there are many problems with using chimpanzees for the study of human diseases,” says John J. Pippin, M.D., F.A.C.C, senior medical and research adviser for PCRM. “Our closest living relatives are like us in many ways, particularly in their capacity for suffering, and yet different enough that infecting them with viruses does not adequately mimic human disease.”
In September, PCRM filed a federal complaint with Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, seeking to stop the planned transfer of the federally owned chimpanzees. The legal petition invoked the Chimpanzee Health Improvement Maintenance and Protection (CHIMP) Act, enacted to ensure that chimpanzees used in experiments for many years are retired to sanctuaries. Twelve authorities, including Dr. Pippin and renowned primatologists, co-signed the petition.

The doctors and scientists argued in their complaint, “Chimpanzees have repeatedly proved to be poor models for human disease research, including for HIV—a disease for which repeated failures have led most researchers to stop using chimpanzees—as well as for hepatitis, malaria, and cancer. Therefore, these animals are not necessary for this type of research. Superior alternatives are available and researchers continue to develop new, cutting-edge models for human disease research.”
Opposition to the chimpanzee experiments also came from Jane Goodall, Gene Hackman, actress Kristin Bauer, as well as scientists, doctors, and countless concerned citizens, including thousands of PCRM members.
Founded in 1985, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is a nonprofit health organization that promotes preventive medicine, conducts clinical research, and encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research.
Story Credit here

Animal Welfare Groups Protested the move of 186 Chimpanzees for research

The pleas of New Mexico officials like Gov. Bill Richardson, Attorney General Gary King and many others have not gone unheard. Some 186 chimpanzees will remain at the Alamogordo Primate Facility on Holloman Air Force Base for now.

The National Institutes of Health informed Richardson on Thursday the chimps will not be transferred to a San Antonio, Texas, facility until the National Academy of Sciences reviews policies on using chimpanzees in biomedical research.

Richardson spokeswoman Alarie Ray-Garcia said that's expected to postpone the transfer for about two years.
A federal contract with Charles Rivers Laboratories to take care of the animals expires in May. The NIH proposed sending them to Texas to be used in research aimed at finding a hepatitis C vaccine.

Animal welfare activists including world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall and actor Gene Hackman threw in their support in protesting the move and the transfer has been opposed by, among others, Animal Protection of New Mexico and a Washington, D.C.-based group called Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
Opponents have argued that chimps do not make good research models for the disease, and that transporting the apes to Texas could harm them.

Richardson, who also has expressed concern about the loss of 35 jobs in Alamogordo, wants the NIH to permanently retire the chimps and convert the primate facility into a sanctuary.

The chimps have been free from testing at the APF at Holloman since 2001. Holloman allowed the facility to stay in its confines under the condition no testing would take place there.

Dr. John Pippin, senior medical and research adviser with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, said the decision is hopeful in two ways.

"It's absolutely the right thing to leave those chimpanzees where they are," Pippin said. "Also, now the National Academy of Sciences is going to look, in an objective fashion, as to if chimp research is useful medically."

Not only could the study result in helping the Holloman chimps, it could also result in moving toward a national legislative prohibition of the use of chimps and other great apes in research, Pippin said.

"The decision shows that when good science, determined elected officials and their supporters come together, they can effect even an agency as determined as the NIH," Pippin said. "This is a terrific thing. Being involed in this personally, I think the most heartening thing is the way individuals, scientific interests and elected officials came together in a single voice."
Story credit Here

186 Chimpanzees remain in New Mexico

The pleas of New Mexico officials like Gov. Bill Richardson, Attorney General Gary King and many others have not gone unheard. Some 186 chimpanzees will remain at the Alamogordo Primate Facility on Holloman Air Force Base for now.

The National Institutes of Health informed Richardson on Thursday the chimps will not be transferred to a San Antonio, Texas, facility until the National Academy of Sciences reviews policies on using chimpanzees in biomedical research.

Richardson spokeswoman Alarie Ray-Garcia said that's expected to postpone the transfer for about two years.

A federal contract with Charles Rivers Laboratories to take care of the animals expires in May. The NIH proposed sending them to Texas to be used in research aimed at finding a hepatitis C vaccine.

Animal welfare activists including world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall and actor Gene Hackman threw in their support in protesting the move and the transfer has been opposed by, among others, Animal Protection of New Mexico and a Washington, D.C.-based group called Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

Opponents have argued that chimps do not make good research models for the disease, and that transporting the apes to Texas could harm them.

Richardson, who also has expressed concern about the loss of 35 jobs in Alamogordo, wants the NIH to permanently retire the chimps and convert the primate facility into a sanctuary.

The chimps have been free from testing at the APF at Holloman since
2001. Holloman allowed the facility to stay in its confines under the condition no testing would take place there.

Dr. John Pippin, senior medical and research adviser with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, said the decision is hopeful in two ways.

"It's absolutely the right thing to leave those chimpanzees where they are," Pippin said. "Also, now the National Academy of Sciences is going to look, in an objective fashion, as to if chimp research is useful medically."

Not only could the study result in helping the Holloman chimps, it could also result in moving toward a national legislative prohibition of the use of chimps and other great apes in research, Pippin said.

"The decision shows that when good science, determined elected officials and their supporters come together, they can effect even an agency as determined as the NIH," Pippin said. "This is a terrific thing. Being involved in this personally, I think the most heartening thing is the way individuals, scientific interests and elected officials came together in a single voice."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Story Credit Here

EU Bans experiments on Great Apes

There's great news from across the Atlantic, where the European Union has voted to ban the use of great apes in experiments. The new legislation also places significant restrictions on testing on other primates and requires that non-animal methods be used whenever possible.

This is an exciting development-but it also raises a question: In light of this humane advance, how can the U.S. government justify its plans to transfer more than 200 "retired" chimpanzees from a facility in New Mexico to a research laboratory in Texas, where they'll probably be forced to endure cruel experiments?

There is no excuse for it, of course, so please help us persuade officials to permanently retire the chimpanzees to a sanctuary.
Story Credit Here

Additional story on the 200 retired chimpanzees;
07-14-2010

Update: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has written to National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins urging him to scrap plans to transfer more than 200 "retired" chimpanzees from the Alamogordo Primate Facility in New Mexico to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research laboratory in Texas. He has also requested the return of 15 chimpanzees who have already been transferred.

"New Mexico wants to save these chimpanzees, who have already given so much of their lives to the American public as part of medical research studies," says the governor. "There is a compassionate and prudent alternative to the National Center for Research Resources' plan, and I feel strongly that we must save the chimpanzees."

Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico is also working hard to ensure that the chimpanzees are spared from further experiments. Stay tuned for more updates.

The folks at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) must have had their fingers crossed behind their backs when they "retired" 288 chimpanzees—who had previously been used in Air Force gravity experiments—to the Alamogordo Primate Facility (APF) in New Mexico. I say this because NIH has now decided to "unretire" the surviving chimpanzees (more than 21 have died in the decade they've spent warehoused in cages at APF, including three who died by electrocution because of unsafe conditions). The animals will be sent to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR) laboratory in Texas, where they will likely be subjected to cruel experiments.

SFBR might sound familiar to readers of this blog because it is the same laboratory where two baboons escaped from cages in May and attacked two employees. PETA filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which then cited SFBR for failure to handle animals in a manner that does not cause trauma or physical harm as well as failure to provide animals with adequate and safe housing. SFBR had previously been cited twice—in 2009 and in February of this year—for failure to house animals in structurally sound enclosures in order to prevent them from escaping and injuring themselves and others. In one incident, a monkey escaped from a cage, got outside into the freezing cold, suffered from hypothermia, and later was euthanized as a result.

SFBR's "punishment" for these offenses? It gets more than 200 chimpanzees to confine, scare, poke, and prod.

Half of the chimpanzees at APF have been living in cages for at least a quarter of a century. As PETA Vice President Kathy Guillermo wrote today in a letter to NIH, it's time to truly retire these primates to a sanctuary, rather than sending them back to a laboratory where they are sure to endure tremendous physical and psychological trauma, possibly for the rest of their lives—which could last another quarter century or more.

Please take a minute to send your own letter to APF and let it know that "retirement" means living the rest of your life free from stress (and not confined to a cage).
Written by Alisa Mullins
Story Credit Here and information on a letter

YEAH, 10 more Chimpanzees Move From NM To Their New Home In Florida!

Chimps to leave NM for a better life

Updated: Monday, 18 Jan 2010, 6:23 PM MST
Published : Monday, 18 Jan 2010, 6:23 PM MST

• Reporter: Jeff Todd
• Web Producer: Devon Armijo

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. (KRQE) - The world’s largest chimpanzee sanctuary is taking another step in clearing out its Alamogordo facility.
The group “Save The Chimps” took control of 266 apes in 2002. They were rescued from the Coulston Foundation in Alamogordo which, according to STC, had the worst record of primate care in the history of the Animal Welfare Act.
"The chimpanzees were used in biomedical research their entire lives," Sanctuary Director Jen Feuerstein said.

Monday, for the first time in 2010, the STC foundation started a migration of 10 chimps to their new home in a Florida sanctuary. After this migration, only 99 chimps will be left in Alamogordo.
"We've been putting them into family groups and relocating them to their permanent home in Florida," Feuerstein said.

So the chimps were loaded into a custom trailer where they willl be driven for 40 hours straight to their new home in Florida.
"It's really rewarding to see the chimps when they get to Florida particularly when I know what their lives were like in New Mexico. In Florida they're given three to five acre islands covered in grass with hills and climbing structures,” Feuerstein said. “They can look up at the starts and not have bars in the way."

The organization plans to move the other 99 chimps by the end of next year and finally close its New Mexico sanctuary.

Source, video and photographs
Visit and Donate Save The Chimps

Cosponsors of Chimpanzee Bill Urge Congress to Take Next Step

The Humane Society of the United States

• 
  
  
  
  More than 1,000 chimpanzees languish in U.S. labs. HSUS
  
  
  

Members of Congress recently pressed U.S. House committee leaders to take a step towards passage of the Great Ape Protection Act (H.R. 1326).
This critical legislation would end harmful research on chimpanzees, retire the approximately 500 federally owned chimpanzees to sanctuary, and make permanent the National Institute of Health's administrative ban on the breeding of chimpanzees for research purposes.
The bill could also save nearly $200 million in taxpayer dollars.
Widespread Support
On December 4, the sponsors of the bill—Reps. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., Dave Reichert, R-Wash., Jim Langevin, D-R.I., and Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md.—sent a letter on behalf of the bill's cosponsors to House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Ca., and House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J. asking for a hearing on the Great Ape Protection Act.
Since the letter was sent, Congressional support for the bill has grown to over 130 cosponsors. Renowned backing primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall has also backed the bill. Dr. Goodall recently met with Chairman Waxman on Capitol Hill to express her support for the legislation.
Federally Funded
The letter highlights the fact that American taxpayers spend an estimated $25 million each year on chimpanzee maintenance and research, but approximately 90 percent of chimpanzees are not used in active experiments. Instead, they are wasting away in federally funded facilities—some for more than 50 years.
The letter also urges Congress to ensure that precious federal research dollars be invested wisely and used in methods that will more likely lead to effective treatments and cures for human illnesses.
Languishing in Laboratories
The opportunity to provide humane retirement for chimpanzees, coupled with the potential taxpayer savings, justifies the consideration of the Great Ape Protection Act.

"Many of these chimpanzees have been languishing in government facilities since the Eisenhower Administration. It is long past time to let our closest living relatives live out the rest of their lives in sanctuary far away from the barren laboratory cages where they are now stored," said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States.

The use of chimpanzees in lab research has drastically declined in recent years due to past scientific failures, discovery of more practical alternatives, high financial costs, increased public outcry and ethical concerns. Yet, there are still approximately 1,000 chimpanzees currently living in seven laboratories in the United States. The U.S. is the only developed nation in the world that continues to use chimpanzees in harmful, invasive research.

Source