Finally a victory on the vivisection front for US animal rights activists! The American Institutes of Health, the National Institutes of Health, have blocked all grants for biomedical and behavioral research on chimpanzees.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himFinally a victory on the vivisection front for US animal rights activists! The American Institutes of Health, i National Institutes of Health, have blocked all grants to the biomedical and behavioral research on chimpanzees.
The reason? Simple, because the primates "as the closest relatives of man, deserve special attention and respect". What's more, according to Francis Collins, the director of the institutes, in the New York Times, "the agency has accepted the recommendations issued by a panel of experts at the Institute of Medicine, according to which most some of the chimpanzee research is unnecessary. "
Of course, the fight against the abolition of vivisection and all the experimentation on animals is far from over and indeed still foresees long battles to be faced. But surely this is a first big and important step towards the final goal. And the suspension of funds - normally crucial for carrying out research - effectively blocks some invasive and painful experiments for monkeys, which - as we have seen several times, even recently - are very similar to human beings.
So satisfied are the US animal rights activists, who speak of historical turning point and an awareness of the inviolability of animal rights which is unprecedented in the world. We remind you that the USA is the only country where experimentation on these animals is still allowed, once even used instead of dummies in crashtests to test the safety of cars.
To continue the path towards the abolition of such practices, it would be advisable for the awareness and information campaigns on the cruel methods used against defenseless animals to also become the subject of international political projects.
Naturally satisfied with ENPA, the National Animal Protection Body: "With the suspension of funding for scientific research involving the use of chimpanzees, defined as" unnecessary in most cases ", a government agency - the US Nih (National Health Institute) - has finally recognized the validity of surrogate methods. The limits - added the ENPA - are linked on the one hand to the speciesist discrimination between primates and other animal species segregated in the laboratories, and on the other to the affirmation that experiments on chimpanzees continue to be valid for some lines of research, “At least until the alternative techniques already discovered will have a greater diffusion.
However - continued the association - the Institute of Medicine, when recognizing the efficacy of replacement models, endorses the position of numerous authoritative researchers and animal welfare associations, who have long argued that experiments on animals, in addition to being of an unprecedented cruelty, they are also useless and counterproductive.
Naturally - concluded the Animal Protection - the limits identified by the National Health Institute have no valid reason to exist: the scientific and technological tools already available today would allow millions of animals to be saved and to develop much more effective therapies than the current ones. precisely because you develop starting from the DNA of man, and not of an animal ".
It is estimated that as of 2006 more than 1.200 chimps have been held in US primate centers: by virtue of their intelligence these primates have been used in a wide range of experiments ranging from psychology to AIDS research. In addition, they have been the focus of US space programs; one of the most famous astronaut chimpanzees was Ham who was employed in the pioneering "Space Chimps" project. But now where to place the more than 2000 specimens destined for research?
A first step has finally been taken, but we remember that the animal species subjected to vivisection are still many. Among these we remember the most subject, such as the fruit fly, the African clawed frog, mice and rats, rabbits, dogs, monkeys and chimpanzees.
So there is still a long way to go ...
Verdiana Amorosi
Photo: NYTimes
Download the NIH report
Read also the 5 most abused animals in vivisection
Also watch the video of some chimpanzees seeing the light of the solo for the first time
