"New federal rules proposed Tuesday would severely restrict medical and behavioral research on chimpanzees and send nearly all of the government’s remaining 450 research chimps into retirement, an unfunded project that could cost $25 million."
"The recommendations, which set high hurdles for new studies using chimps, arrive even as research with the apes has grown increasingly rare.
'There is no compelling scientific reason to maintain a large research population,' said Daniel Geschwind, a researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles who co-chaired the working group that made the recommendations to an advisory panel for the National Institutes of Health. 'The majority of NIH-owned chimps should be designated for retirement.'
The United States is the only country that keeps chimpanzees for research."
Brian Vastag reports for the Washington Post January 22, 2013.
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