Yesterday, PETA Associate Director of Laboratory Investigations Justin Goodman spoke at a National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine meeting on the issue of whether the U.S. should continue to be the only industrialized nation in the world that conducts harmful experiments on chimpanzees and other great apes. Justin told the committee, “In 2011, it lacks academic integrity to deny that chimpanzees possess all of the qualities necessary for us to afford them the right not to be treated as laboratory equipment.”
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He was joined by a host of scientists, doctors, and great ape experts, including world-renowned chimpanzee expert Dr. Jane Goodall, who resoundingly agreed that experiments on apes are not necessary in order to develop effective treatments for hepatitis C, HIV/AIDS, cancer, and other illnesses that have often been cited as justification for experiments on chimpanzees.
Also supporting a ban on great-ape experiments is Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, R-Md., who has introduced the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act in Congress. Bartlett is a former Navy physiologist who once experimented on primates. In a recent opinion piece in The New York Times, he describes seeing chimpanzees suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and says that without question, they “experience pain, stress, and social isolation in ways strikingly similar to the way humans do.”
You can help by urging your Congressional representatives to support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
