President Barack Obama's new $100 million BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) is intended to provide insight into human brain function and behavior to help find cures for diseases. But considering that the project's leadership committee is dominated by animal experimenters who have little experience in human brain research, it's doubtful that the initiative will be either "advanced" or "innovative" or that it will produce results relevant to humans.

So PETA is appealing to the National Institutes of Health, which was tasked with selecting scientists for the panel, to shake up the leadership committee and include scientists who are engaging in the human-based research necessary to solve human health problems.

Sixteen of the 17 panel members are involved primarily in archaic animal experiments, which have consistently failed to find cures for human brain disorders because of fundamental biological differences between species. In fact, in a recent Reuters article on the BRAIN Initiative, Dr. Christer Nordstedt, Eli Lilly and Co.'s vice president of neuroscience research, said, "We've been handicapped by the fact that we have been studying diseases in animals that don't really exist in animals. Mice don't get depression. They don't get schizophrenia. They don't get Alzheimer's disease."

Including at least some of the thousands of researchers who use ethical, human-based research methods, such as advanced imaging and other modern technology, will offer insights into the human brain that are not possible through experiments on animals. That means that the initiative will get closer to finding cures without tormenting animals in cruel and deadly experiments and wasting more taxpayer money.

You can help by e-mailing your senators and representatives and urging them to divert taxpayer funds away from animal experiments and into relevant, lifesaving human-based research.

For decades, PETA has been calling for an end to the cruel and irrelevant use of chimpanzees in experimentation. We’ve made significant progress over the years bring an end to this national disgrace, and now the government is finally taking concrete steps to do the same.  

© Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals

An Historic Decision

At a historic meeting this afternoon, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) committee recommended that the agency cut funding for seven of the nine current taxpayer-funded grants for biomedical experiments on chimpanzees and fully or partially cut funding for 12 of 13 behavioral studies. With regard to the fate of these 360 NIH-owned chimpanzees, the committee stated that "the majority of NIH-owned chimpanzees should be designated for retirement and transferred to the federal sanctuary system. Planning should start immediately ...."

The NIH's momentous move follows the landmark 2011 finding of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) that "most current biomedical research use of chimpanzees is not necessary." After the report's release, the NIH formed a committee to determine, among other things, which taxpayer-funded projects should be ended and how many chimpanzees should be retired.

Persistence Pays Off

PETA submitted recommendations calling for a complete end to experimentation on chimpanzees to both IOM and NIH during these deliberations—and that's just one part of the extensive groundwork that led to this exciting development. Every step of the way, PETA has relentlessly pursued any and all avenues to uncover abuse to chimpanzees in laboratories and has advocated for the creation of stronger federal policy and legislation to protect chimpanzees from being tormented in experiments. 

PETA has exposed cruelty in laboratories, filed complaints against laboratories that experiment on chimpanzees, reached out to Members of Congress, organized demonstrations, gained celebrity support, filed shareholder resolutions, launched online advocacy campaigns, and called for an end to this barbaric practice in popular and academic publications.

What You Can Do

The end is in sight, but we must not stop until all chimpanzees are out of laboratories. Please sign PETA's petition asking Congress to retire all federally owned chimpanzees to sanctuaries.