Freeing Our Family Members

American lawmakers have an opportunity to prohibit testing on great apes. That would be a highly evolved decision

Chimpanzees are our closest relatives. Humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor in Africa over 3 million years ago.

But we have not been such great relatives.

There are an estimated 1,000 chimpanzees trapped in laboratories around the United States.

But four lawmakers have been trying to do something about it.

On March 5, 2009, representatives Edolphus Towns (D-NY), David Reichert (R-WA), James Langevin (D-RI) and Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) reintroduced the Great Ape Protection Act of 2009, H.R. 1326 (GAPA) to end invasive biomedical research and testing on chimpanzees as well as bonobos, gorillas, orangutans and gibbons.

Technically, "great apes" are members of the family Hominidae. Humans are in this family.

The GAPA bill has been referred to committee and has already received the support of 141 members of Congress as co-sponsors, a development that is being hailed by the New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS) as an indication that there is significant momentum behind this legislation.

According to the bill, "Great apes are highly intelligent and social animals and research laboratory environments involving invasive research cannot meet their complex social and psychological needs."

If passed, the bill would also retire about 600 federally owned chimpanzees currently in American laboratories -- many of whom have been trapped in labs for more than 40 years.

"Chimpanzees have been poor research models for human illness, so most of these animals aren't even being used in active research, but instead are warehoused at great taxpayer expense," according to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).

"While they languish, it costs about $20-25 million a year to keep them in eight federally-funded labs. H.R. 1326 is expected to save taxpayers nearly $200 million over the lifespan of the chimpanzees."

"Like human children, young chimpanzees learn life skills via observation and imitation," according to NEAVS. "They in turn pass these lessons on to their children, resulting in a complex socio-cultural system."

What lessons are we teaching the chimpanzees that are confined and being tested on?

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a (HSUS) letter urging your representative to support the Great Ape Protection Act
• Volunteer with the Great Apes Project, which defends the rights of the great primates to live in liberty in their natural habitats
• Sign a PETA petition urging President Obama to ban military trauma exercises on animals
• Support the Fauna Foundation chimp sanctuary
• Sign a petition to stop the bushmeat trade and hunting of primates

RELATED POSTS

• Chimp Trauma (September 16, 2009)
• Protecting Great Apes (August 13, 2009)
• Chimp Apocalypse Now (June 15, 2009)
• A Peculiar Evil Grows in Austria (May 26, 2009)
• Military Torture: Not Just for Humans (May 17, 2009)
  
• Killing Congo's Chimps (March 29, 2009)
  
• Tracking Our Second-Closest Relatives (March 24, 2009)
• The Gloomy Dean (January 30, 2009)

image: McDreamy, a former laboratory chimp in the Netherlands who has been rescued (research using apes is no longer allowed in the Netherlands), now living in a safari park (credit: patries71)