Target: Dr. Francis S. Collins, Director of the National
Institutes of Health Goal: Ensure all sick chimpanzees retired
from federal research centers are allowed to live out the rest
of their days at sanctuaries The United States remains the only
industrialized nation in the world to use live chimpanzees in
invasive research experiments. While the National Institutes of
Health’s (NIH) decision to retire 110 federally owned
chimpanzees from invasive experiments at first seemed like a
victory for these intelligent and beautiful creatures, the
actual fate of most of these animals can hardly be considered
retirement at all. Only 10 chimpanzees released from the New
Iberia Research Center in Lafayette, Louisiana will be sent to a
sanctuary to live out their final years in peace. The other 100
are currently doomed to spend their last days at the Texas
Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, where they
may still be used as subjects in non-invasive research. These
chimpanzees have already lived through a