The reason I'm frustrated is that your comment is that it is "truthy." The general idea is true (you can learn a lot from genetically similar organisms) but the

The reason I'm frustrated is that your comment is that it is "truthy." The general idea is true (you can learn a lot from genetically similar organisms) but the specific example is misleading. Chimps are not--and weren't ever--a major part of biomedical research. I just looked on PubMed, which indexes pretty much all biomedical research. "Chimpanzee" returns twelve thousand articles; "monkey" returns 18.5 million. I don't disagree that we can learn interesting things about evolution or anthropology from chimp research; I have lunch with a comparative anatomy lab all the time. At the same time, chimp research is mostly very basic science-focused. I can only think of one counter-example, which is the development of Hepatitis B vaccine. This was done in chimps and because of their close similarity to humans: other animals appear not to get Hep B. While this sort of proves your point, it's a singular exception rather than the rule.