Ingrid Newkirk's Blog
August 24, 2010
Will Obama Allow 60-Year-Old Space Program Veterans To Retire?
New Mexico's Governor Richardson met with National Institutes of Health (NIH) officials this week in a last-ditch effort to stop NIH from moving 202 "retired" chimpanzees out of Holloman Air Force base and back into invasive experiments. NIH is moving swiftly to transfer the chimpanzees into facilities so substandard that caging conditions within them violate not only everything that we have come to know about what chimpanzees require but also federal law itself. Some of the animals are 60 years old -- some are left over from the space program. Gov. Richardson's visit came on the heels of petitions and pleas by everyone from physicians, veterinarians and primatologists to actors such as Gene Hackman, all of which have been ignored.
It was only a week earlier that Time magazine's cover story asked the question, "What's on animals' minds?" Fifteen years before, as Dr. Jane Goodall mulled over the complex relationships within chimpanzee families, Time had asked, "Do animals think?" Now the question is "What do animals think?" In the case of chimpanzees, who have been taught to use sign boards and even American Sign Language to communicate with their human captors, they think a lot.
The more pressing question is now "What is NIH thinking?" And the answer isn't befitting our nation's level of awareness about animals and its commitment to their protection.
In 2001, the U.S. Congress recognized that chimpanzees should be retired from experimentation. "Retirement" has not meant a beachfront condo or a return to the Gombe. Charities have managed to wrest away some chimpanzees, rehabilitate them from a life that, in some cases, consisted of 34 years on a concrete bench in a tiny cell or two decades in a steel cage barely any bigger than the animal's body, and put them in group care.
In many cases, "retirement" has meant a continuation of solitary confinement but no more invasive and painful procedures. Imbued with active, intelligent minds, naturally inclined to complex social relationships, as capable of falling in love and carefully raising their children as we are, they sit and wait, alone, with not even a blanket or an orange to keep them company. It is cruel and unusual punishment for a thinking being, but it is still far better than also being cut apart and sewn back up every so often, which is the fate that now awaits them again if NIH does not stop this wretched plan.
NIH has already moved 15 of the "retired" chimpanzees to the Southwest Foundation, a Texas facility that has failed to meet federal minimum standards for the care of animals. Federal minimum standards for chimpanzees, by the way, require no more than enough room in which to stand, sit and turn around -- for life. Charles River Laboratories, which operates the Alamogordo Primate Facility, another dungeon-like laboratory complex as notoriously inhumane as Devil's Island, plans to start experimenting on these and the other chimpanzees soon.
Carl Sagan once wondered if those who experiment on nonhuman primates would fare as well as their subjects if the tables were turned. At first, he thought they would. But in one experiment, in which monkeys were only permitted to eat if they pulled a lever that administered an electric shock to another monkey, the monkeys chose to abstain from food for up to 14 days, even if they didn't know the monkey being shocked. Sagan had to wonder how many human beings in the same situation would be so selfless.
If this administration is to be seen as remotely humane, President Obama must act quickly to stop the NIH officials who have chosen to ignore all that we have learned over the years about how indistinguishable chimpanzees are from us in any important way, such as the ability to feel pain and fear, love and joy, and the desire to live with others of one's own kind. The chimpanzees being moved out of Holloman are not a testament to our society's quest for understanding and compassion but rather a testament to its ability to betray, for a few bucks, those who depend on us for mercy.
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Comments
Rochelle Baumgartner says …
August 25, 2010 01:11 PM
To whom it may concern,
Animals deserve to live in peace. They share a lot of the same feelings as we do. Please stop all experimentation and release these beautiful animals. Would you want to live with constant suffering and torture?
diana says …
August 25, 2010 01:12 PM
please read this, thanks so much!
G. Borrebach says …
August 25, 2010 01:17 PM
Let's prove that we are indeed civilized creatures, and stop the torture of other living beings!
Joel Rovani says …
August 25, 2010 01:31 PM
Its articles like these that cause me to stop and question who we are as a society. Its this kind of shocking and inhumanly vile behavior that gives the cynics of world a voice,shouting from the rooftops of injustices that we must not commit, lest we damage ourselves and our culture in ways that we will not be able to come back from. Sadly, and most shamefully, our leaders choose not to listen. I have a deep and permanent trepidation of who and what we will be a hundred years from now.
Stephanie says …
August 25, 2010 01:33 PM
These chimps need to be able to live the rest of their lives in peace, not invasive "research"!
Nina Steen says …
August 25, 2010 01:38 PM
Please allow these poor animals to live their lives in peace and with the respect that they deserve.
Rebecca Hassell says …
August 25, 2010 01:49 PM
This is such a beautiful letter, it would be hard to add to it. The plight of our fellow sentient beings is deplorable. I hope the Obama administration will respond effectively and compassionately.
I look forward to reading your new book.
S. McIntyre says …
August 25, 2010 02:11 PM
Nazis, I really thought Obama would be better, but I guess he's the same as Bush.
If this is allowed to proceed, then I don't want to live on this planet anymore and it might as well blow up. For all the good things in it, there's just too much bad... We're supposed to make less suffering, not cause it in Holocaust proportions. Shame on them all. You will all go straight to hell for this cruelty and stupidity..
DARCIE MONROE says …
August 25, 2010 02:43 PM
Please President Obama, give these chimps a better life and tell National Institutes of Health to reconsider the decision to move 202 chimps back to be tortured. NIH is not befitting our nation's level of awareness about animals and its commitment to their protection.
Thank you for your time and for standing up for what is right.
linda says …
August 25, 2010 02:54 PM
stop this useless cruelty!
lady chelsea galanti says …
August 25, 2010 03:30 PM
This is inhumane. Please dont do this anymore.
Jenny Betts says …
August 25, 2010 05:29 PM
I am an advocate for Obama and an animal activist. I hope he does the right thing. The country is directed into the right direction and I wold hate to see us take a step back!
Debbie Lee says …
August 25, 2010 08:48 PM
It's 2010, stop the cruelty! Many animals take better care of their babies than humans. People in the states that have the death penalty could ...hmmmm?
Kathleen Brown says …
August 25, 2010 09:14 PM
Please hold all and every scientist And technician who shall ever conduct any experi
ent on any animal or person for one, to be punished by law to the fullest extent permissable, for harming any ani
al deliberately. However, I do ask with earnestness, to please at minimum hold each and every of these-- as well as whom orders these experiments -- to be enforced upon them strict psychological and medical accountability such as testing of MRI for schizophrenia, empathy ability, psychopathic sadist behaviours as well as intelligence, iq tests-- as it is certain that motives may be most likely false and of displaced and unnecessary intentions whereas there is no need for the ani
aks to suffer. I also ask of uou to enforce a social science study of comparison among these profiles to the contrast of scientists wjo justify these means to the ends of science necesity and of those who do not, and between those who suggest it is only physical or in any way justified pain and any who say there is not, and finally let a verdict reign to end Imanimal experiments altogether, Nd at once. Also please make them prove the DNA structure proves the differences between thinking and feeling and conscie ce beings and those who are not is more than the physical identification. Please. Thank you, Kathleen brown
Courtney B says …
August 26, 2010 12:49 AM
Stories like this make me sick to my stomach.It makes me so sad to know that we bring so much pain and suffering to such innocent beings. The worst part,is that it's for such selfish reasons. If you have the power to stop their pain, then please PLEASE, bring some peace to these innocent victims.
Anissa says …
August 26, 2010 12:17 PM
I am so saddened that human beings can be, are being so thoughtless and cruel towards these chimps. With all that we know about these beautiful, inteligent creatures, still they are used for experiments. Would you put a human in place of the chimp?
Please put an end to this!
Let them live out there lives in peace and freedom, socially.
Michelle Meeds says …
August 26, 2010 10:07 PM
Isn't there enough pain and suffering in the animal world? Do we really need more? These chimps have endured enough and deserve better. Please help them. Thanks you for listening.
kelly groves says …
August 28, 2010 09:07 PM
This is why animal rights advocates get angry and we get violent. This is why direct action is necessary. Everyone and there mother is pleading with the numbskull NIH and they won't budge. They don't care that these beautiful beings are about to be totured, they just crack a beer and turn on there TV. Animal rights will not happen without a serious fight.
Anita Walsh says …
August 28, 2010 10:16 PM
Thank you so much for writing this. After calling Senators and signing petitions, I'm with you... this needs to go right to the top. I found this article in The Albuquerque Journal today as a guest editorial. The Journal too, has been very supportive of the retirement of the Alamogordo Chimpanzees. please formulate a petition to The President that we all can sign. In the meantime I have posted this to my Facebook Wall...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/