Lab Chimps Get Glimmer Of Light At End Of Tunnel

by Sherry Morse

At the annual American Association of Laboratory Animal Science (AALAS) convention held in Seattle Washington's Convention and Trade Center last month, animal pain and its treatment was one of the top topics, but a proclamation that chimpanzees may one day not be used for research in the United States took center stage.

The recognition and treatment of pain in animal research subjects signifies a shift in scientific ethics, according to bioethicists.

"The concept of animal consciousness has moved to the point at which [it is acknowledged that] animals not only feel pain but are conscious of it, or suffer from it," says Dr. Steve Miles, a professor of medicine at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota.

During a session on the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research, Kathleen Conlee, a primate specialist with the Humane Society of the United States, asked John Strandberg of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), about the likelihood of a future ban on the use of chimpanzees in experiments.

Strandberg is the director of comparative medicine for NIH's National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), which funds the US's eight national "primate centers".

"It wouldn't surprise me," Strandberg said, "that at some time in the future - I don't want to get into when - chimpanzees are not used."

Strandberg later explained that the recent ban on the use of chimps for research by the European Union and New Zealand, as well as the pro-chimp public sentiment in the US, has made NIH reconsider its hard line on all animal species being available for research.

If the ban were enacted, it would be the first time the US government stopped the use of any species in biomedical research.

"I think what it signals is that there are changes of the sort that people in the animal-rights movement have been talking about for thirty years," said Peter Singer, a bioethicist at Princeton University and author of the book 'Animal Liberation', a classic work of animal rights philosophy.

"It's not going to be an all or nothing thing," Singer said. "It's a matter of making steady progress in changing people's views."

© 2003 Animal News Center, Inc.