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| Courtesy of Chimp Haven, NIH |
Citing growing alternative options in preclinical testing, drug giant Merck ($MRK) said it will stop conducting or financially supporting biomedical research on chimpanzees.
"Merck's new biomedical research policy will save chimpanzees from unnecessary and painful experiments. Merck's decision, and that of several other pharmaceutical companies, sends a strong message that private industry is moving away from chimpanzee research as the government has," said Kathleen Conlee, vice president of animal research issues for the Humane Society of America, said in a statement.
Merck joins a growing number of Big Pharma and biotech companies like GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK), AstraZeneca ($AZN), Novo Nordisk ($NVO), AbbVie ($ABBV), Amgen ($AMGN), Hospira ($HPS) and Gilead Sciences ($GILD), that have vowed to end research on chimps.
The gradual phase-out began in 2011, when an Institute of Medicine report found that chimpanzee use in research is largely unnecessary. The report failed to identify any area of current biomedical research for which chimpanzee use is essential. Then, in June 2013, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a proposed rule to list captive chimpanzees in the U.S. and wild chimpanzees as "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act. Just two weeks later, the National Institutes of Health announced plans to retire most of its chimps--about 310--to sanctuaries over the next few years. It will keep but not breed up to 50 chimpanzees for future research projects that meet standards set by the 2011 IOM report.
The report did not call for an outright ban on chimpanzee research, but it endorsed putting a stop to the use of chimps for most invasive medical research and outlined certain criteria as to when, if ever, current and future medical studies should use chimps.
- read the press release from the Human Society of the United States