NIH Restricts Use of Chimpanzees in Labs

vikingpower writes "The U.S. National Institutes of Health on Thursday suspended all new grants for biomedical and behavioral research on chimpanzees and accepted the first uniform criteria for assessing the necessity of such research (full report here). Those guidelines require that the research be necessary for human health, and that there be no other way to accomplish it. A San Francisco Chronicle article points out why chimpanzees are so often used for medical research, as they are evolutionarily the closest to human beings. One may wonder if Europe and Asia are to follow the U.S.?"

substitute?

[AntEater]

I guess they'll have to go back to using grad students.

Re:substitute?

[EvilSpudBoy]

The research will suffer becuase grad students aren't as evolutionarily close to human beings as chimpanzees.

It makes perfect sense

[shadowrat]

Look at all the trouble those super smart rats caused. It's probably not a good idea to be doing that stuff with something that starts out even smarter, like a chimp.

Wait. Is NIH different from NIMH?

I guess they saw the movie

[erroneus]

... the most recent remake of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes might be enough to make them rethink things a little...

Re:substitute?

[jellomizer]

Planet of the Grad Students.

Ruled by Mr. Zaius BS.

Unfair

[backslashdot]

Look, I have disagreements with Tea Party supporters too .. but to outright ban them from labs? That doesn't seem right to me.

Re:Unfair

[c0lo]

Look, I have disagreements with Tea Party supporters too .. but to outright ban them from labs? That doesn't seem right to me.

Non sequitur. NIH banned the use of evolutionary closer relatives of humans, didn't say anything about lower species.