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Beringia

(4,316 posts) Mon Dec 16, 2013, 05:42 PM Dec 2013

Arden, 4 year old chimp, retired from New Iberia Research Center in LA, to Chimp Haven in LA

Arden the 4 year-old chimp is a mischievous little girl. Playfully breaking away from her mom, she roots around a mound using a branch to dig up treats, as her mom gently reigns her in again, and her great grandmother relaxes in the sun nearby. But life wasn't always this good for Arden and her family. Up until just a few months ago, they had spent their lives behind bars at New Iberia Research Center, The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, -- the largest chimpanzee lab in the world.

In 2008, we conducted a 9-month undercover investigation at NIRC, exposing the routine and inhumane mistreatment of the primates there. Video footage captured a nightmarish existence spent subjected to painful experiments, and consumed by anxiety -- some screaming, throwing themselves against their cages, and even tearing large gashes into their own arms and legs. With our investigation fueling the effort to get chimps out of labs, and after our continuous advocacy work with federal lawmakers and government agencies, the turning point has finally come. The National Institutes of Health announced a plan to retire all of its chimps from NIRC to Chimp Haven, the national chimpanzee sanctuary in Keithville, Louisiana. Soon after, they recommended that the vast majority of government-owned chimps be phased out of laboratory testing and retired to sanctuary. It's been a long road, but the promise of new lives for hundreds of government-owned chimpanzees is now in sight.

Arden was among the first 50 chimps from NIRC to arrive at Chimp Haven. When I saw her swinging in the trees, I was moved to tears. Arden gets to grow up in as close to a natural environment as possible, and to be with her family -- with no bars between them. With your help, we can continue to make this life a reality for more chimps and other primates.

National Institutes of Health to retire most lab chimpanzees
June 26, 2013, By Julie Cart

Following the recent federal decision to list captive chimpanzees as an endangered species, the National Institutes of Health announced Wednesday it would retire the majority of the approximately 360 government-owned chimpanzees currently held in laboratories. The NIH will begin implementing most of the recommendations made by an advisory group that considered the findings of a 2011 Institute of Medicine study that concluded chimps were no longer crucial for most biomedical and behavioral research. The lab chimps will be retired to facilities already housing aging great apes. The NIH said it would reserve up to 50 chimpanzees in a laboratory for potential future use, emphasizing that the animals would be housed in “ethologically appropriate” settings.

As the closest living relatives to humans with 98% of the same DNA, chimpanzees have played an indispensable role in biomedical and behavioral research. Scientists kept them in large colonies in Texas and New Mexico, where they are commonly housed in large corrals or cages, usually in groups. They are sometimes held separately for extended periods because they are in fragile health or to prevent the transmission of diseases, according to a 2011 report from the Institute of Medicine. Scientists credit chimps with helping make important discoveries involving cancer, hepatitis, autoimmune diseases and other conditions. Although there are still a few areas of biomedical research for which chimps remain essential, experiments involving them have fallen out of favor as scientists switched to using mice, rats and other animals that have been genetically altered so that their immune systems mimic those of humans.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jun/26/science/la-sci-sn-research-chimpanzees-released-20130626

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