Great Ape research ban

Animal testing 140px Main articles Alternatives to animal testing Animal testing Animal testing on invertebrates Animal testing on frogs Animal testing on non-human primates Animal testing on rabbits Animal testing on rodents History of animal testing History of model organisms Issues Biomedical Research Animal rights Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act Animal welfare Great Ape research ban International trade in primates Controversial experiments Britches Cambridge University primates Pit of despair Silver Spring monkeys Unnecessary Fuss Companies Charles River Laboratories, Inc. Covance · Harlan Huntingdon Life Sciences UK lab animal suppliers Nafovanny Groups/campaigns Americans for Medical Progress AALAS · AAAS Foundation For Biomedical Research Boyd Group · BUAV Physicians Committee Primate Freedom Project Pro-Test · SPEAK Research Defence Society Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty Writers/activists Colin Blakemore · Carl Cohen Simon Festing · Tipu Aziz Categories Animal testing Animal rights Animal welfare

A Great Ape research ban, or severe restrictions on the use of non-human great apes in research, is currently in place in the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany and Austria. In Austria, as the only country in the world, even experiments on lesser apes, the gibbons, are completely banned too.

These countries have ruled that chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans are cognitively so similar to humans that using them as test subjects is unethical. Announcing the UK’s ban in 1986, the British Home Secretary said: "[T]his is a matter of morality. The cognitive and behavioural characteristics and qualities of these animals mean it is unethical to treat them as expendable for research." Britain continues to use other primates in laboratories, such as macaques and marmosets.

The British newspaper, The Independent, has argued that the "demand for a comprehensive ban by the European Union on experiments involving great apes is surely unanswerable"

The United States is the world's largest user of chimpanzees for biomedical research, with approximately 1,300 individuals currently in U.S. labs. A Washington-state group called Ban Ape Research (BAR) is campaigning to enact an ordinance in Seattle that would prohibit non-human great-ape experiments in that city, which would be the first jurisdiction in the U.S. to take this step.

In 2006 the permanency of the UK ban was questioned by Colin Blakemore, head of the Medical Research Council. Blakemore, while stressing he saw no "immediate need" to lift the ban, argued "that under certain circumstances, such as the emergence of a lethal pandemic virus that only affected the great apes, including man, then experiments on chimps, orang-utans and even gorillas may become necessary." The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection described Blakemore's stance as "backward-looking."

See also

• Great Ape personhood
• Declaration on Great Apes
• Great Ape Project
• Primate
• Monkey
• Animal liberation movement
• Animal testing

External links

• Great Ape Trust of Iowa
• SEEC.net
• ReleaseChimps.org

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