Update: Making this historic day for animals even more significant, NIH has announced that it will accept all the recommendations of the IOM committee and that it will stop funding any new experiments on chimpanzees! All current experiments on chimpanzees will be reevaluated, and many may be ended. Until NIH conducts another review of the situation, none of the NIH-owned chimpanzees currently living in laboratories but not being experimented on will have to endure further experiments. This includes the chimpanzees at the Alamogordo facility.

Group Urges Congress to Make Ban Permanent

— PETA welcomes the announcement by Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, that NIH is suspending funding for new experiments on chimpanzees and will reevaluate all 37 currently funded studies—half of which Dr. Collins believes are not likely to meet criteria for funding going forward. NIH has now begun a process that should lead to what PETA has long advocated to the government―a complete ban on experiments on chimpanzees in laboratories.

It’s now extremely important for citizens to contact their legislators in Congress and ask them to support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act to put the final nail in the coffin of chimpanzee experiments.

Read Primates in Laboratories

For more information, visit PETA.org.