Chimp research: Unethical and futile, or necessary evil?

The U.S. biomedical industry conducts more experiments on chimpanzees than anyone else in the world, and that has caused a heated debate in the scientific community about the research’s morality and utility.

“I have yet to meet a chimpanzee that has been a bank robber or an ax murderer — so why do they end up with life imprisonment?” asks Roger Fouts, a professor of psychology at Central Washington University who successfully taught chimps American sign language in 1967.

Other scientists argue that research on chimps is a necessary evil because human research is out of the question. They say chimps are the next best model for human physiology because they are nearly 100 percent genetically similar to humans.

But Ray Greek, medical director of Europeans For Medical Advancement, said the genetic similarity figures are meaningless.

“There are several different ways of measuring genetic similarity, and (the result) varies depending on what you’re measuring and how you’re measuring it,” he said.

Theodora Capaldo, the president of Project R&R: Release and Restitution for Chimpanzees in U.S. laboratories, said certain vaccines that proved physically beneficial for chimps actually proved physically harmful for humans, and vice versa.  

“In all of the major areas of health, (chimps) have failed to produce any real significant or important results for humans,” she said.

Fouts said chimps are physically unlike but mentally similar to humans, so it’s both unethical and futile to use them in biomedical research.

Tissue cultures, autopsies and clinical observations all produce more sophisticated findings, and Greek said these methods could be perfected if the scientific community changed its focus altogether, like other countries have been doing.

But he said he doesn’t see that happening anytime soon because so much has been invested in the chimpanzee research industry.

“(Chimp research) is all some scientists know how to do,” he said. “If you say there should be no more chimp research, you’re threatening their livelihood.”

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