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http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/american-life/Congress-Considers-Banning-Medical-Experiments-on-Chimpanzees--84496552.html

Congress Considers Banning Medical Experiments on Chimpanzees

Scientists, animal rights advocates, spar over lab tests on chimps

Julie Taboh | Washington, DC 16 February 2010

Chimpanzees are our closest animal relative. So close, in fact, that
98 percent of a chimpanzee's DNA is identical to that of humans.

The highly intelligent primates share many of our physical and
behavioral characteristics and that similarity has made them
attractive to medical researchers, sparking a heated debate over
animal rights and medical ethics.

Essential or inhumane

The United States is the only country in the world that still allows
federally-funded medical experiments on chimpanzees. The practice
includes developing and testing new vaccines and drugs that might
prevent or cure potentially-fatal human diseases.

Supporters of the practice say medical tests involving chimps have
helped save millions of lives worldwide.  Animal welfare activists
argue that subjecting chimpanzees to painful, and often lethal,
experiments is cruel and inhumane.

Dr. Hope Ferdowsian, director of research policy at the nonprofit
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), says chimpanzees
used for HIV and hepatitis research are anaesthetized with a dart gun
before being subjected to harmful and invasive procedures. Besides its
ethical objections, PCRM argues that the use of chimpanzees in the lab
is an ineffective way to advance medical research.

Ineffective in humans?

Elizabeth Kucinich, wife of U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich, is a
long-time animal welfare advocate. She also serves as director of
public affairs for the Physicians Committee.

Kucinich says science has evolved since the 1920s when primates were
first used for experimentation. "Since that time we've really learned
that as close as they are to human species, they're not close enough
for any real scientific outcomes for drug testing."

According to Kucinich, over 80 different HIV-related vaccines have
worked in chimpanzees but none have proven effective in human beings.

A recent undercover investigation conducted by the Humane Society of
the United States found chimpanzees in a Louisiana research center
being subjected to harsh treatment and painful medical experiments.

They also found these highly social animals living in small,
prison-like cages where some have languished for decades.

Ethical Questions

Humane Society president Wayne Pacelle says it isn't just the physical
abuse of the chimpanzees that's troubling. "I think the larger issue
is the psychological torment; animals isolated, kept away from others
who can give them companionship, fearing what's going to happen next,
and animals living in this constant state of confinement."

Hope Ferdowsian of the Physicians Committee says chimpanzees don't
have to suffer like this and explains that there are alternatives to
the use of chimpanzees in research. "For example, in HIV research,
we've learned a lot from human epidemiological studies and ethically
conducted clinical trials," she says. "We've also learned a lot about
the virus from mathematical and computer modeling. For hepatitis C
vaccine we're learning a lot from in vitro or cell-based methods."

Banning experiments on chimps

Both Kucinich and Ferdowsian were on Capitol Hill recently,
campaigning for newly introduced congressional legislation that would
eventually ban invasive experiments on chimpanzees.

According to Ferdowsian, the Great Ape Protection Act, or GAPA, "would
ban all invasive and harmful research on chimpanzees in American
laboratories." It would also "release federally-owned chimpanzees,
about half of the thousand chimpanzees that are languishing in
American laboratories today, to sanctuaries."

But the legislation is not to everyone's liking. John VandeBerg,
director of the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San
Antonio, Texas, says the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research is
essential.

He argues that there are no other animals that can be infected with
Hepatitis C virus, Hepatitis B Virus or HIV.

"So in order to develop drugs to treat people who have Hepatitis B,
Hepatitis C, particularly, we need to use chimpanzees to determine if
the drugs can reduce the level of viruses in their blood and in their
livers," says VandeBerg.

While he acknowledges that there is much to be learned from
alternative research methods like cell culture - a process by which
cells are taken from a living organism and grown under controlled
conditions - VandeBerg says they have learned a lot more from research
on chimpanzees.

"There are hundreds of millions of people who suffer from hepatitis-B
and hepatitis-C, the two diseases which are most important for the
moment for chimp research," says Dr. John VandeBerg, director of the
Southwest National Primate Research Center.

"For example," he says, "we cannot determine if a drug is going to
work in a human being, and be safe in a human being by testing that
drug in cell culture models. We must determine first if it's going to
work in a living animal that has all the complexities of a human
being."
VandeBerg says he and his colleagues go out of their way to use lower
forms of animals before experimenting on chimpanzees. "When the
research progresses to a stage when the information coming from mice
and rats is not sufficient, we may move up to using monkeys. And when
monkeys can't give us the answers we need, only then, do we move to
the chimpanzee."

Benefiting millions

VandeBerg also points out that the research that's been conducted on
chimpanzees so far has already benefited much of the world's
population.

"Three hundred and fifty million human beings in the world are
infected with Hepatitis-B virus. Three hundred million people in the
world are infected with Hepatitis-C virus. That's almost a tenth of
the world's population." says Vandeberg. "It would be unethical for us
to turn our back on these people and not conduct the research that is
so desperately needed to develop the drugs to treat these diseases and
the vaccines to prevent them in the future."

Vandeberg also defends his research facility, saying that the animals
in his primate research center receive better care than most people in
the world. "They live in social groups, they live in indoor-outdoor
enclosures, they have heating in the winter and air conditioning in
the summer; our chimps even have televisions," he says.

World renowned primate expert Jane Goodall believes using chimpanzees
in medical research is "morally wrong and unacceptable".

But such creature comforts don't change the fact that chimpanzees used
in medical research may suffer or die, and that's unacceptable to
famed primate expert Jane Goodall. She spent decades studying and
living among Central African chimpanzees in the wild and now campaigns
to protect the endangered species.

"We need to recognize at the outset that what we do to animals - from
their perspective certainly, and probably from ours - is morally wrong
and unacceptable, and that it's really important to follow through on
all these exciting new leads into ways of doing research without using
animals," says Goodall.

But John VandeBerg of the Southwest National Primate Research Center
says if the proposed legislation to phase out medical research on
chimpanzees is passed, scientists like him will have to end their
work. "It will be a great tragedy for humanity if research with
chimpanzees were stopped."

The Great Ape Protection Act is currently making its way through the
U.S. Congress. It has more than 140 co-sponsors in the House of
Representatives. Until the measure becomes law, medical testing on
chimpanzees will continue to be a highly divisive, and hotly debated,
issue.