Is it ethical to conduct experiments on captive chimpanzees to help others survive in the wild? Ed Yong’s take:
In February 2011, a team of scientists led by Peter Walsh at the University of Cambridge injected six captive chimpanzees with an experimental vaccine against the deadly Ebola virus. At first glance, the study looked like a lot of other medical research, in which drugs that are meant for humans are first tested on other animals. But this was different. These scientists were working with chimps to help chimps. The twin threats of poaching and habitat loss are driving the African apes – chimps, bonobos, and gorillas – towards extinction. Diseases are also a problem. Our ape relatives are vulnerable to infections like anthrax, malaria, and respiratory viruses that spill over from human tourists and researchers.
As Yong notes, such studies may soon be a thing of the past:
The era of biomedical research on chimpanzees is drawing to a close. The United States and Gabon are the only countries that still allow this kind of research, and the US may soon leave this short list. In 2011, the Institute of Medicine issued a report saying that “most current use of chimpanzees in biomedical research is unnecessary” – a conclusion that the National Institutes of Health took seriously. In 2013, it announced that all but 50 of its chimps would be retired to sanctuaries. Meanwhile, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has tabled a proposal to list captive chimps under the Endangered Species Act – a move that would ban medical procedures beyond those that “enhance the propagation or survival of the affected species.”
Walsh’s study might still fit the bill but it wouldn’t matter, since labs with the right facilities to house and work with chimps would shut down. That’s a problem, since national park managers in Africa insist that scientists prove the safety of vaccines in captive apes before using them on wild ones (and monkey data won’t suffice). To Walsh, you need captive chimps to test vaccines that would save wild ones from diseases. He’s not just talking about Ebola, either. Vaccines could also protect chimps from HRSV – a human virus that they catch from humans, often with fatal results.
The Dish 