A decision to move 186 chimpanzees from a southern New Mexico facility to Texas is pitting government officials and scientists against a coalition of elected officials and animal rights advocates, including New Mexico’s governor and famed primate researcher Jane Goodall.
The chimps have spent the past decade undisturbed by medical researchers. However, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has decided to cut government costs by moving the animals to a San Antonio primate facility, where animal rights activists worry they will be improperly poked, prodded and stabbed in the name of science.
New Mexico Govenor Bill Richardson and others would prefer to see the chimps’ current home — a former biomedical research lab at Holloman Air Force Base — converted into a chimpanzee sanctuary. After visiting the site on Tuesday, the governor said the animals are in excellent health and he suggested the New Mexico lab could instead become a behavioral research facility.
However, the director of the Texas facility maintains opponents have it wrong. The chimps will have outstanding care and live in quality surroundings as they undergo testing that can include injections and, in some cases, the use of a needle to remove a small liver sample, he said.
“These are mostly clinical procedures that are also done with human beings,” Southwest National Primate Research Center director John VandeBerg said. “We are doing them with chimpanzees to develop drugs and vaccines that can be used in human subjects.”
VandeBerg said the research is “ethical and imperative” if scientists are to develop vaccines to prevent the suffering and deaths of millions of people worldwide from Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV.
Chimps share up to 96 percent of their DNA with humans, making them the only animals that can be tested.
VandeBerg said researchers also use chimps to study osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, osteoarthritis and other aspects of aging.
The colony of chimps traces its roots to the space race and Project Mercury. Their home near Alamogordo, New Mexico, was once a biomedical research lab operated by the Coulston Foundation. However, the foundation turned over the colony to the NIH in 2000 as part of a settlement of animal welfare violations.
The NIH then hired a private company, Massachusetts-based Charles River Laboratories, to manage the facility. The agency decided to send the chimps to Texas after its current 10-year contract with Charles River runs out at the end of next year.
Richardson visited NIH headquarters in Maryland last month, asking officials to reconsider the decision. Goodall wrote in July seeking to have the chimps retired.
However, the NIH maintains the move will save taxpayers US$2 million a year — money that VandeBerg argued could be invested in additional research to combat illnesses — and federal officials are showing no signs of plans to alter course.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS