6 ms·

NIH to retire all research chimpanzees

81 points by sethbannon 11y ago

vinay427 11y ago
About time. I was watching a CBC documentary on a sanctuary in Louisiana and the US was clearly criticized as an outlier in this respect. The chimpanzees are treated terribly with no regard given for their livelihood. Nothing should have to go through that in my opinion. This policy is a few decades late but better late than never.
- escaped_hn 11y ago
  enjoy your cancer.
  - dang 11y ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the HN guidelines.
krisdol 11y ago
Florida is about to get a lot more crowded
adamc 11y ago
Finally! I think it was obvious decades ago that this was ethically wrong, but we were blinded by the benefits to us.
- vdaniuk 11y ago
  >was ethically wrong Debatable and depends on the choice of either deontological or consequentialist theory of ethics.
  - StefanKarpinski 11y ago
    Yes, hiding immoral, cruel behavior behind obscure words and abstract theories is a time-honored tradition.
  - grt178 11y ago
    If you believe Peter Singer's argument, then regardless of a deontological or consequentialist viewpoint, you must accept experimentation on mentally retarded humans in order to accept experimentation on great apes. Neither deontology nor consequentialism has any justification for specicism.
    - rtl49 11y ago
      Why should one accept Peter Singer's argument? For instance, if you regard morality as a framework for negotiating conflicts of interest within the species, it could make sense to reject experimentation on handicapped humans while allowing experimentation on apes belonging to other species.
- readme 11y ago
  The article makes it seem more like there's just no demand for research on chimps anymore.
  - goodJobWalrus 11y ago
    Interestingly, the only ones who demand it seem to be people who do conservation work for the chimps.
- kiba 11y ago
  We experiment on lab mice, in which we torture them, give them cancer, force them to eat unhealthy diets, and so on. It's also great for medical research. But on the other hand, mices living in the wild also meet brutal ends, either by starvation or predation or natural diseases. So, where do we draw the line?
  - goodJobWalrus 11y ago
    > which we torture them I'm not sure to which extent this is true. From what I read (for example S. Pinker mentions this in his Better Nature..) these days all research on animals needs to be ok-ed by ethics committees, and the types of famous research from the past we read about wouldn't fly today. Pinker mentions explicitly his experience as an undergrad with experiments that involved rat torture and says that would never happen today. I guess people who actually work at labs would know more about this, but it appears that things have changed even for lab rats (even though we still destroy them mercilessly when they become pests to us.
vj44 11y ago
I'd like to challenge the underlying assumption of NIH's reasoning here: “We reached a point where in that five years the need for research has essentially shrunk to zero. “ This is not true. The demand for research animals is huge, and growing. Due to extremely restrictive laws and procedures governing the use of animals in research in the US and the EU (source: my own experience), virtually all interesting research (=breakthrough/publishable) becomes impractical. What has already happened is that all interesting research moved to countries with less restrictive laws, namely China (source: direct exposure to my Chinese colleagues in neuroscience). With their vast and unrestrictive funding (CAS etc.), it is the Chinese who are now coming out with some fascinating results. More than that, some of my EU/US colleagues collaborate directly with them, on the exact same research, just on the Chinese soil (read: inconvenience of relocation, but that's about it).
- igravious 11y ago
  I agree that this comment “We reached a point where in that five years the need for research has essentially shrunk to zero.” is a bit disingenuous as it is the same restrictive regulations that these institutes have put into place that have driven the demand to zero. However, that was the intended consequence I would argue. And rather than say, “This is the state of affairs we wanted, we wanted zero invasive research on primates.” they are going to deflect blame because they get charged with endangering public health, “Given NIH’s primary mission to protect public health, it seems surprising,” And that _is_ what is happening. It's an ethical trade-off. I'd actually prefer them to say that they were aware that some science might take longer but that the chimpanzee's well-being was now being taken into consideration, so sorry about that. I can see why they don't though, even if that's what they believe.
  - Pigo 11y ago
    This makes a lot of sense, and makes me wonder how much experimentation on humans has risen in the time it took for that demand to reach zero. Or maybe how much regulation of human experiments has relaxed. I doubt there's much advocacy for these people, who are often just people in need.
thehoff 11y ago
Reminded me of this story I read a while back: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/25-years-ago-in-virginia-a-very-different-ebola-outbreak/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/25-years-ago-in-virginia-a-very-... And those wanting to learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_virus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_virus
nnq 11y ago
Primates are a very valuable resource for medical research. Lots of research programes would highly benefit from higher primates. But researches have been driven to be even afraid to ask for access to such a resource if they want grants accepted anywhere in the world! Gould luck asking for any higher primate for any neuroscience research if you want it approved! By artificially making them prohibitively expensive (by, for examples, demanding higher quality of animal care and all sorts of authorizations) and by adding tons of ethical and regulatory concerns, nobody even asks for them because the cost/risk ratio for any project makes it not worth it. It's "probably" X times cheaper to go to a third world country and cladestinely test any crucial biotech stuff directly on humans as they are cheap and in some places "unwanted" anyhow. Governments/army probably have access to prisons for their needs also. I can imagine when cool and useful stuff like implantable high-res-and-bandwidth brain-computer-interfaces come to market with killer side-effects because of improper prior testing. Oh wait... they'll probably come 50 years later anyhow because they're too risky/expensive to develop and test. This kinds of stupid policy moves could have even nastier species-level consequences: imagine having a superhuman-AI pop up before we have human-mind-uploading capabilities and wipe out the whole goddamn human race before we get to upload even one human-intelligence to the cloud :| ...simply because the mind uploading stuff and its precursor technologies would've had to be developed through iterative testing on chimpanzees because it was illegal or too expensive (or the army/gov was not interested in it strongly enough to have the experiments done directly on humans). Sad...
- igravious 11y ago
  Your comment is: _strident/emotive_ very valuable resource, even afraid to ask, prohibitively expensive, etc. _melodramatic_ "cladestinely test any crucial biotech stuff directly on humans" _fantastical_ "cool and useful stuff like implantable high-res-and-bandwidth brain-computer-interfaces" _hyperbolic_ "wipe out the whole goddamn human race" Meanwhile back on planet Earth some higher primates in one corner of the world get to not be experimented on.
  - nnq 11y ago
    > Meanwhile back on planet Earth some higher primates in one corner of the world get to not be experimented on. don't care that much about what you call "planet Earth". yeah, someone has to care about this too (we also need to survive the present in order to steer the world towards our visions) but I choose to not be one of them. my little "vision of future" is cool enough for me. and when back on "planet Earth" I strive to pull people and things as strong as possible towards my vision, and hopefully one day the future will get close enough to it, and at least my grandchildren will enjoy some of it. actually, the only reason I cared about this piece of news is because its consequences have the possibility to steer the future to a point that might be different from my vision, and this is something I care about, and I instinctively attack anything threatening my vision event potentially ...especially when bored enough to enjoy some trolling. ...but I sincerely appreciate you comment :) mine was a crazy-ish rant, but yours actually has useful copy writing style tips that I might find useful here on "planet earth". cheers!
cryoshon 11y ago
A setback for science, but a large ethical step forward. I am a bit unsettled by the idea that even non-invasive and neutral research will stop; this means that some of the work I did on SIV vaccine efficacy (for the purposes of learning in service of making an HIV vaccine) a few years ago might not get the ethical approval to be performed today even though we were using macaques instead of chimps. I anticipate a chilling effect on primate studies in general after this policy change as the review boards attune to the new current of cash flow from the NIH. Monkey trials have always been exorbitantly expensive, and non-chimp studies will probably see cost rises in addition to reduced funding. In our trials, the monkeys were given harmless vaccinations, and had blood draws every once in a while, then retired to a sanctuary at the end of the study... not remotely unethical, but probably not consistent with the highest standards of animal rights that are coming into vogue. A lot of these monkeys are very well cared for-- not loved, but definitely attended to. There are federal IACUC regulations on how many toys they are allowed to have, and how to rotate their selection of toys such that they only have access to their favorite toy/food/drink some of the time so that they don't get hedonic desensitization. These monkeys even have privacy rights regarding their medical info in some niche cases.
- oneJob 11y ago
  I would argue that your premise that science and ethics are mutually exclusive (they must be if you can say good/bad for science but good/bad for ethics) is completely, utterly false. science := 1) the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment; 2) a systematically organized body of knowledge on a particular subject ethics := 1) moral principles that govern a person's or group's behavior; 2) the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles To take an either or approach to endeavors which touch on both science and ethics is to immediately set out with a means to ends vs ends to means approach depending on where one's priorities lie. I'd argue that ethics is pervasive and pertinent across every and all human endeavors, including ethics, and that the task is to work the scientific process in an ethical manner. Not to put the two at odds.
  - Retric 11y ago
jrowley 11y ago
How do you all feel about testing on dogs? I know a guy who has induced strokes in beagles while they were anesthetized and inside an MRI. In the past we were never able to see a stroke occur and the brain's response in real time. The research might lead to breakthroughs in how we treat stroke which could save thousands of human lives... an ethical conundrum without a doubt.
rtl49 11y ago
I take issue with the suggestion that this is an unambiguous sign of ethical progress in scientific research. One problem is that there is rather little clarity on the set of ethical principles that warrants the inclusion of other species into our sphere of moral concern. It seems that, from a detached perspective, the only identifiable basis for our moral sense is that it enables human beings to negotiate conflict and cooperate in social settings without recourse to violence. It's difficult for some to see how a concern for the other great apes advances this goal. On the other hand, there are many research contexts where the close evolutionary relationship between Homo sapiens and the other great apes makes the latter an extremely useful pool of specimens in situations where experimenting directly on the former would conflict with this goal. In other words, we need to clarify the justification for concern for the well-being of the other great apes. Is this mere empathy, or is there a rational basis for the ethical judgment which accounts for the basis of morality?

81 points by sethbannon 11y ago

About time. I was watching a CBC documentary on a sanctuary in Louisiana and the US was clearly criticized as an outlier in this respect. The chimpanzees are treated terribly with no regard given for their livelihood. Nothing should have to go through that in my opinion. This policy is a few decades late but better late than never.

escaped_hn 11y ago
enjoy your cancer.
- dang 11y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the HN guidelines.

krisdol 11y ago

Florida is about to get a lot more crowded

adamc 11y ago

Finally! I think it was obvious decades ago that this was ethically wrong, but we were blinded by the benefits to us.

vdaniuk 11y ago
>was ethically wrong Debatable and depends on the choice of either deontological or consequentialist theory of ethics.
- StefanKarpinski 11y ago
  Yes, hiding immoral, cruel behavior behind obscure words and abstract theories is a time-honored tradition.
- grt178 11y ago
  If you believe Peter Singer's argument, then regardless of a deontological or consequentialist viewpoint, you must accept experimentation on mentally retarded humans in order to accept experimentation on great apes. Neither deontology nor consequentialism has any justification for specicism.
  - rtl49 11y ago
    Why should one accept Peter Singer's argument? For instance, if you regard morality as a framework for negotiating conflicts of interest within the species, it could make sense to reject experimentation on handicapped humans while allowing experimentation on apes belonging to other species.
readme 11y ago
The article makes it seem more like there's just no demand for research on chimps anymore.
- goodJobWalrus 11y ago
  Interestingly, the only ones who demand it seem to be people who do conservation work for the chimps.
kiba 11y ago
We experiment on lab mice, in which we torture them, give them cancer, force them to eat unhealthy diets, and so on. It's also great for medical research. But on the other hand, mices living in the wild also meet brutal ends, either by starvation or predation or natural diseases. So, where do we draw the line?
- goodJobWalrus 11y ago
  > which we torture them I'm not sure to which extent this is true. From what I read (for example S. Pinker mentions this in his Better Nature..) these days all research on animals needs to be ok-ed by ethics committees, and the types of famous research from the past we read about wouldn't fly today. Pinker mentions explicitly his experience as an undergrad with experiments that involved rat torture and says that would never happen today. I guess people who actually work at labs would know more about this, but it appears that things have changed even for lab rats (even though we still destroy them mercilessly when they become pests to us.

vj44 11y ago

I'd like to challenge the underlying assumption of NIH's reasoning here: “We reached a point where in that five years the need for research has essentially shrunk to zero. “ This is not true. The demand for research animals is huge, and growing. Due to extremely restrictive laws and procedures governing the use of animals in research in the US and the EU (source: my own experience), virtually all interesting research (=breakthrough/publishable) becomes impractical. What has already happened is that all interesting research moved to countries with less restrictive laws, namely China (source: direct exposure to my Chinese colleagues in neuroscience). With their vast and unrestrictive funding (CAS etc.), it is the Chinese who are now coming out with some fascinating results. More than that, some of my EU/US colleagues collaborate directly with them, on the exact same research, just on the Chinese soil (read: inconvenience of relocation, but that's about it).

igravious 11y ago
I agree that this comment “We reached a point where in that five years the need for research has essentially shrunk to zero.” is a bit disingenuous as it is the same restrictive regulations that these institutes have put into place that have driven the demand to zero. However, that was the intended consequence I would argue. And rather than say, “This is the state of affairs we wanted, we wanted zero invasive research on primates.” they are going to deflect blame because they get charged with endangering public health, “Given NIH’s primary mission to protect public health, it seems surprising,” And that _is_ what is happening. It's an ethical trade-off. I'd actually prefer them to say that they were aware that some science might take longer but that the chimpanzee's well-being was now being taken into consideration, so sorry about that. I can see why they don't though, even if that's what they believe.
- Pigo 11y ago
  This makes a lot of sense, and makes me wonder how much experimentation on humans has risen in the time it took for that demand to reach zero. Or maybe how much regulation of human experiments has relaxed. I doubt there's much advocacy for these people, who are often just people in need.

thehoff 11y ago

Reminded me of this story I read a while back: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/25-years-ago-in-virginia-a-very-different-ebola-outbreak/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/25-years-ago-in-virginia-a-very-... And those wanting to learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_virus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reston_virus

nnq 11y ago

Primates are a very valuable resource for medical research. Lots of research programes would highly benefit from higher primates. But researches have been driven to be even afraid to ask for access to such a resource if they want grants accepted anywhere in the world! Gould luck asking for any higher primate for any neuroscience research if you want it approved! By artificially making them prohibitively expensive (by, for examples, demanding higher quality of animal care and all sorts of authorizations) and by adding tons of ethical and regulatory concerns, nobody even asks for them because the cost/risk ratio for any project makes it not worth it. It's "probably" X times cheaper to go to a third world country and cladestinely test any crucial biotech stuff directly on humans as they are cheap and in some places "unwanted" anyhow. Governments/army probably have access to prisons for their needs also. I can imagine when cool and useful stuff like implantable high-res-and-bandwidth brain-computer-interfaces come to market with killer side-effects because of improper prior testing. Oh wait... they'll probably come 50 years later anyhow because they're too risky/expensive to develop and test. This kinds of stupid policy moves could have even nastier species-level consequences: imagine having a superhuman-AI pop up before we have human-mind-uploading capabilities and wipe out the whole goddamn human race before we get to upload even one human-intelligence to the cloud :| ...simply because the mind uploading stuff and its precursor technologies would've had to be developed through iterative testing on chimpanzees because it was illegal or too expensive (or the army/gov was not interested in it strongly enough to have the experiments done directly on humans). Sad...

igravious 11y ago
Your comment is: _strident/emotive_ very valuable resource, even afraid to ask, prohibitively expensive, etc. _melodramatic_ "cladestinely test any crucial biotech stuff directly on humans" _fantastical_ "cool and useful stuff like implantable high-res-and-bandwidth brain-computer-interfaces" _hyperbolic_ "wipe out the whole goddamn human race" Meanwhile back on planet Earth some higher primates in one corner of the world get to not be experimented on.
- nnq 11y ago
  > Meanwhile back on planet Earth some higher primates in one corner of the world get to not be experimented on. don't care that much about what you call "planet Earth". yeah, someone has to care about this too (we also need to survive the present in order to steer the world towards our visions) but I choose to not be one of them. my little "vision of future" is cool enough for me. and when back on "planet Earth" I strive to pull people and things as strong as possible towards my vision, and hopefully one day the future will get close enough to it, and at least my grandchildren will enjoy some of it. actually, the only reason I cared about this piece of news is because its consequences have the possibility to steer the future to a point that might be different from my vision, and this is something I care about, and I instinctively attack anything threatening my vision event potentially ...especially when bored enough to enjoy some trolling. ...but I sincerely appreciate you comment :) mine was a crazy-ish rant, but yours actually has useful copy writing style tips that I might find useful here on "planet earth". cheers!

cryoshon 11y ago

A setback for science, but a large ethical step forward. I am a bit unsettled by the idea that even non-invasive and neutral research will stop; this means that some of the work I did on SIV vaccine efficacy (for the purposes of learning in service of making an HIV vaccine) a few years ago might not get the ethical approval to be performed today even though we were using macaques instead of chimps. I anticipate a chilling effect on primate studies in general after this policy change as the review boards attune to the new current of cash flow from the NIH. Monkey trials have always been exorbitantly expensive, and non-chimp studies will probably see cost rises in addition to reduced funding. In our trials, the monkeys were given harmless vaccinations, and had blood draws every once in a while, then retired to a sanctuary at the end of the study... not remotely unethical, but probably not consistent with the highest standards of animal rights that are coming into vogue. A lot of these monkeys are very well cared for-- not loved, but definitely attended to. There are federal IACUC regulations on how many toys they are allowed to have, and how to rotate their selection of toys such that they only have access to their favorite toy/food/drink some of the time so that they don't get hedonic desensitization. These monkeys even have privacy rights regarding their medical info in some niche cases.

oneJob 11y ago
I would argue that your premise that science and ethics are mutually exclusive (they must be if you can say good/bad for science but good/bad for ethics) is completely, utterly false. science := 1) the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment; 2) a systematically organized body of knowledge on a particular subject ethics := 1) moral principles that govern a person's or group's behavior; 2) the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles To take an either or approach to endeavors which touch on both science and ethics is to immediately set out with a means to ends vs ends to means approach depending on where one's priorities lie. I'd argue that ethics is pervasive and pertinent across every and all human endeavors, including ethics, and that the task is to work the scientific process in an ethical manner. Not to put the two at odds.
- Retric 11y ago

jrowley 11y ago

How do you all feel about testing on dogs? I know a guy who has induced strokes in beagles while they were anesthetized and inside an MRI. In the past we were never able to see a stroke occur and the brain's response in real time. The research might lead to breakthroughs in how we treat stroke which could save thousands of human lives... an ethical conundrum without a doubt.

rtl49 11y ago

I take issue with the suggestion that this is an unambiguous sign of ethical progress in scientific research. One problem is that there is rather little clarity on the set of ethical principles that warrants the inclusion of other species into our sphere of moral concern. It seems that, from a detached perspective, the only identifiable basis for our moral sense is that it enables human beings to negotiate conflict and cooperate in social settings without recourse to violence. It's difficult for some to see how a concern for the other great apes advances this goal. On the other hand, there are many research contexts where the close evolutionary relationship between Homo sapiens and the other great apes makes the latter an extremely useful pool of specimens in situations where experimenting directly on the former would conflict with this goal. In other words, we need to clarify the justification for concern for the well-being of the other great apes. Is this mere empathy, or is there a rational basis for the ethical judgment which accounts for the basis of morality?