US Slows Chimp Testing

Earlier this month, the National Institutes of Health, the US medical research agency, drew up guidelines for assessing the use of chimpanzees in research and shelved all new grants that would conduct research on chimpanzees. The announcement came quickly in response to a report released earlier in the same day by the Institute of Medicine, which said that the use of chimpanzees for research is unnecessary. While the new guidelines do not bring a complete end to the use of chimpanzees for research, animal-welfare advocates see the changes as a positive step. According to the Humane Society of the United States, roughly 1,000 chimpanzees currently reside in US laboratories.