Chimpanzee experiments in the United States could end very soon. We’re doing everything we can at PCRM to get these intelligent, sensitive animals out of laboratories in 2012. This week, we sent the federal government a plan that could help accomplish this.

The National Institutes of Health’s Council of Councils was recently charged with implementing last year’s Institute of Medicine report that found that chimpanzee experiments are not needed to develop an HIV vaccine, hepatitis C antiviral drugs, or treatments for a wide range of other human illnesses.

We just submitted official comments to the council stating that the NIH should focus on steps to phase out and end invasive experiments on chimpanzees. The following is an excerpt of comments submitted to NIH by PCRM’s director of academic affairs John J. Pippin, M.D., on implementation of the report:

“The IOM committee's report does not comprehensively address the ethical implications of using chimpanzees, though the committee acknowledged the importance of ethical and moral considerations and commented that ‘… the research must be of sufficient scientific or health value to offset these moral costs. There are many ethical approaches to analyze and either justify or proscribe the use of animals in research, and the committee was neither tasked nor appropriately composed to evaluate and reach consensus on a particular approach or to apply it to research on chimpanzees.’ This working group of the Council of Councils has the opportunity to include ethical considerations in recommending steps in the implementation of the committee's report.”

A final report of recommendations will be presented in early 2013. In the meantime, chimpanzees continue to languish in laboratories. But there is something you can do to help them today: Contact your members of Congress and ask them to support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act. It’s a bill currently before Congress that will permanently end the use of chimpanzees in invasive experiments, permanently end federal breeding programs, and release federally owned chimpanzees to permanent sanctuaries.

To learn more about the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act and ask Congress to pass the bill, please visit PCRM.org/GAPCSA.