In their natural homes in the wild, chimpanzees—humans' closest living genetic relatives, who are more like us than they are like gorillas—are never separated from their families and troops. Profoundly social beings, they spend every day together exploring, building and using tools to solve problems, foraging, playing, grooming each other, and making soft nests for sleeping each night. They care deeply for their families and forge lifelong friendships. Chimpanzee mothers are loving and protective, nursing their infants and sharing their nests with them for four to six years. They have incredible memories and share cultural traditions with their children and peers. They empathize with one another and console their friends when they are upset. They will help others, even at a personal cost to themselves. They grieve when their loved ones pass away. They laugh when they're enjoying themselves and grimace when they're afraid.
Sadly, in the early 1920s, experimenters in the U.S. began purchasing baby chimpanzees who had been kidnapped from the forests of Central and West Africa. To capture baby chimpanzees, hunters would kill the mother chimpanzees and any other adult chimpanzees who tried to defend the babies. Often, whole families were killed just to obtain a few babies. The mortality rate among these babies during capture and transport was high. Those who made it to U.S. laboratories suffered terribly and died young. In 1923, the notorious American psychologist Robert Yerkes—who dreamed of creating the ideal chimpanzee "servant of science"—purchased a young bonobo and a chimpanzee whom he had hoped to study into maturity. Both died within a year. Undeterred by the carnage and suffering inherent in the chimpanzee trade, experimenters continued to fuel the practice. In the early 1950s, the U.S. Air Force secured the capture of 65 young chimpanzees from Africa for use in military flight experiments at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The descendents of these chimpanzees were used in infectious disease experiments and in high-velocity seat belt tests and now live in virtual retirement at the Alamogordo Primate Facility.
While many people believe that this practice is a shameful relic of the past, it persists today in the U.S. With a 2010 ban on great ape experimentation passed in the European Union, the U.S. holds the dishonorable distinction of being the only nation in the world, other than Gabon, that continues to conduct invasive experiments on chimpanzees.
Chimpanzee Experimentation in the U.S. in the 21st Century
More than 900 chimpanzees still languish in laboratories in the United States, with as many as 80 percent of them simply being warehoused because there is no longer a need to use them in experiments.
In these prisons, chimpanzees are very often caged alone and deprived of the freedom, autonomy, and meaningful social interaction that they need. There are no families, no companions, no grooming, and no nests. There are only cold, hard steel bars and concrete—and terror and loneliness that go on for so many years that most chimpanzees sink into depression, eventually losing their minds. As a result of having to endure the terror and pain of having their bodies routinely violated for experiments and the loneliness of their tiny steel and concrete prison cells, many chimpanzees bear lifelong emotional scars. Numerous studies have shown that even long after they are retired from experimentation, many chimpanzees exhibit abnormal behaviors indicative of depression and post-traumatic stress. They suffer from symptoms like social withdrawal, anxiety, and loss of appetite. They pull out their own hair, bite themselves, and pace incessantly.
Four facilities funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) continue to conduct experiments on chimpanzees. These facilities include the Southwest National Primate Research Center, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's New Iberia Research Center, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Experimenters at Yerkes subject chimpanzees to neuroimaging, cognitive and motor testing, and invasive endocrine status tests in long-term studies on aging. At Southwest, MD Anderson, and New Iberia, chimpanzees are, among other things, subjected to multiple liver biopsies and frequent "knockdowns" in which they are shot with a tranquilizer dart gun. Recently at MD Anderson, chimpanzees were also used in an absurd experiment looking at whether salt intake increased blood pressure, something that has been well-established in humans for decades.
Several other entities—including contract testing laboratory BIOQUAL and pharmaceutical manufacturer Abbott Laboratories—also continue to torment chimpanzees in privately and federally funded experiments for hepatitis C and other illnesses. In BIOQUAL's most recent published chimpanzee study, experimenters from the company and from the NIH (which funded the study) separated six young chimpanzees (ranging from 2 to 8 years old) from their mothers, locked them in individual cages, and attempted to infect them with norovirus, which causes diarrhea, vomiting, and stomach pain. The juvenile chimpanzees were then subjected to months of painful biopsy procedures in which pieces of their livers and intestines were removed.
Most chimpanzees locked in U.S. laboratories have been intentionally infected with diseases, such as HIV, hepatitis, cancer, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), malaria, and heart disease—even though advances in technology make these tests irrelevant and decades of experimentation show that chimpanzees' bodies do not react the same way to these diseases as humans' do.
In 1995, the NIH placed a moratorium on the breeding of federally owned chimpanzees after it was discovered that chimpanzees don't get sick after infection with HIV and do not contract AIDS.
In 2011, a landmark report by the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine (IOM) that examined the scientific validity of experiments on chimpanzees concluded that "most current biomedical research use of chimpanzees is not necessary." In response, the NIH announced that it was suspending consideration of funding for any new experiments on chimpanzees. The agency also stated that all currently funded experiments on chimpanzees would be reevaluated, that funding for as many as 50 percent may be ended based on the IOM's conclusions, and that any chimpanzees not currently being used in experiments, including the chimpanzees in semi-retirement at the Alamogordo Primate Facility, may not be enrolled in any studies during the NIH's review.
Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act
While the IOM report and NIH's review are steps in the right direction, the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act (H.R. 1513/S. 810), which has been wending its way through Congress with tremendous bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, is the only measure that would permanently end the use of chimpanzees and all other great apes in invasive experiments and retire more than 600 federally owned chimpanzees to sanctuaries where they would, at last, be able to live out their days in peace. You can join PETA's effort to liberate chimpanzees from laboratories here.