A chimp is sedated to draw blood in their efforts to find a cure
for Hepatitis C, a potentially deadly virus, at Texas Biomedical
Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. Government scientists
now want hundreds of research chimps like this one to be retired
to a national sanctuary. Government scientists have agreed that
all but 50 of hundreds of chimpanzees kept for federally funded
research should be retired from labs and sent to a national
sanctuary. The proposal from a National Institutes of Health
committee also said all of the chimps should have plenty of room
to play and climb. The NIH Council of Councils Working Group
approved the proposal on Tuesday. It also calls for major cuts
in grants to study chimps in laboratories and no return to
breeding them for research. Nine chimpanzees arrived Tuesday at
Chimp Haven outside Shreveport, La., from the University of
Louisiana at Lafayette's New Iberia Research Center, which no
longer has an NIH chimp research contract. Seven more are
expected Thursday and an