November 19, 2015
Following years of campaigns by PETA and other animal-advocacy groups, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced its decision to retire all federally owned chimpanzees from laboratories and make plans for them to spend the rest of their lives in reputable sanctuaries. NIH previously had announced a much-criticized plan to keep 50 of the total 360 chimpanzees in laboratories indefinitely for potential future experimentation. NIH Director Francis Collins noted a “complete absence of interest” in experimentation on chimpanzees as the reason for the decision.
