SAN ANTONIO — BIOMEDICAL research with captive chimpanzees, an enterprise that has helped save millions of human lives, is being dismantled. The National Institutes of Health, citing a reduced need for chimps in research as well as their “likeness to humans,” recently decreed that all but 50 of the 451 chimps that are federally owned or supported will be retired and moved to sanctuaries. 
 
 As the chief scientific officer at a research institute that has 90 chimps supported by the N.I.H., I bemoan this development. In my view, the benefits of such research outweigh the costs. Many people disagree with me, citing their commitment to animal welfare. 
 
 But here is a fact about animal welfare that my opponents fail to consider: research with captive chimpanzees is vital to the development and testing of vaccines that can help save the lives not just of humans but also of wild chimpanzees and gorillas. It could even help those species from becoming extinct. 
 
 Wild great ape populations are being decimated by diseases. Over the last 20 years, Ebola hemorrhagic fever has killed a third of the wild gorilla population and nearly as high a fraction of the wild chimpanzee population. Of the chimps in Gombe Stream National Park, in Tanzania, more than 40 percent are affected by chimpanzee AIDS; their death rate is 10 to 16 times higher than that of uninfected chimps. Human respiratory diseases, which are transferred to great apes in areas where they have close contact with people, are the most destructive: 48 percent of all recorded disease-related deaths at Gombe from 1960 to 2006 were from respiratory illness. 
 
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 All these infectious diseases are potentially preventable in apes by administering prophylactic or therapeutic vaccines. Such vaccines are under development, and research programs with captive chimpanzees are critical to further advancing them, not only to ensure their safety and efficacy but also to develop the practical means of delivering them in the wild. 
 
 Many people are unaware that vaccines have been administered to wild great apes. In 1966, a polio epidemic among the chimpanzees at Gombe Stream National Park was halted when the chimps were given the oral polio vaccine in bananas. Captive chimpanzees had been instrumental in research that developed the vaccine. 
 
 More recently, an Ebola vaccine underwent testing in chimpanzees at the New Iberia Research Center at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. The vaccine was effective in inducing an immune response that would be expected to be protective against the virus that causes the disease. But for the vaccine to be practical for delivery to wild great apes, more research is required to develop an oral formulation that is safe, effective and stable for long periods of time when distributed in great-ape habitat areas. Fieldworkers consider oral delivery (using food treats, for example) key to mass vaccinations of wild apes; injection by dart gun works only with ape populations habituated to close human contact. 
 
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 Captive chimpanzees have also been used for developing and testing candidate vaccines for the human respiratory syncytial virus, or HRSV. As early as 1995, investigators at the N.I.H. reported that a candidate vaccine intended for human use provided a high level of protection to chimpanzees. Since HRSV is prevalent only in those apes that have high exposure to humans and are amenable to close human contact, this vaccine could be delivered via dart gun, a method that has successfully vaccinated wild gorillas against measles. 
 
 A candidate therapeutic vaccine for chimpanzee AIDS is also available. The lead researcher, Beatrice Hahn, a professor of medicine and microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, has expressed hope that H.I.V.-infected captive chimpanzees at research facilities will become available for the vaccine’s further development and testing. While the motivation for creating such a vaccine is ultimately to help humans, the viruses that cause AIDS in humans and apes are different, and this vaccine is designed expressly for chimps. 
 
 Policy makers are thwarting the opportunities that such vaccines represent. The 50 chimpanzees that the N.I.H. has allowed for use in future research are too few for the work that needs to be done. Hundreds of chimpanzees were required to develop the hepatitis B vaccine and for uncompleted work toward a hepatitis C vaccine. 
 
 While technical and medical advancements have reduced the extent to which chimps are needed for biomedical research, chimps continue to be vital for certain research purposes, as the N.I.H.’s working group on this issue has conceded. (And some of those technical and medical advancements, it should be noted, were themselves developed from research with chimpanzees.) 
 
 The N.I.H. has not permitted a single chimpanzee that it owns or supports to be enrolled in a new research study since December 2011. For the time being at least, and maybe forever, we as a society must accept that humans — and chimpanzees and gorillas — may continue to die from diseases that could have been prevented or treated by medical products developed from research with chimpanzees. ||||| NIH to reduce significantly the use of chimpanzees in research 
 
 The National Institutes of Health plans to substantially reduce the use of chimpanzees in NIH-funded biomedical research and designate for retirement most of the chimpanzees it currently owns or supports. NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. accepted most of the recommendations made by an independent advisory council for implementing a set of principles and criteria defined by the Institute of Medicine for the use of chimpanzees in NIH-funded research. 
 
 NIH plans to retain but not breed up to 50 chimpanzees for future biomedical research. The chimpanzees that will remain available for research will be selected based on research projects that meet the IOM’s principles and criteria for NIH funding. The chimpanzees designated for retirement could eventually join more than 150 other chimpanzees already in the Federal Sanctuary System. The Federal Sanctuary System was established in 2002 by the Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Maintenance and Protection (CHIMP) Act and Chimp Haven operates the Federal Sanctuary System, which is overseen by NIH. 
 
 “Americans have benefitted greatly from the chimpanzees’ service to biomedical research, but new scientific methods and technologies have rendered their use in research largely unnecessary,” said Dr. Collins. “Their likeness to humans has made them uniquely valuable for certain types of research, but also demands greater justification for their use. After extensive consideration with the expert guidance of many, I am confident that greatly reducing their use in biomedical research is scientifically sound and the right thing to do.” 
 
 In accepting the recommendations, NIH plans to: 
 
 retain but not breed a small fraction of chimpanzees for future research that meets the IOM principles and criteria 
 
 provide ethologically appropriate facilities (i.e., as would occur in their natural environment) for those chimpanzees as defined by NIH based on the advisory council recommendations and with space requirements yet to be determined 
 
 establish a review panel to consider research projects proposing the use of chimpanzees with the IOM principles and criteria after projects have cleared the NIH peer review process 
 
 wind down research projects using NIH-owned or -supported chimpanzees that do not meet the IOM principles and criteria in a way that preserves the research and minimizes the impact on the animals 
 
 retire the majority of the NIH-owned chimpanzees deemed unnecessary for biomedical research to the Federal Sanctuary System contingent upon resources and space availability in the sanctuary system 
 
 Some technical changes in NIH’s legal authority are needed to retire additional chimpanzees to the Federal Sanctuary System. NIH will continue working with Congress to remedy a provision that currently limits the amount of financial resources NIH may put toward retiring chimpanzees and caring for them in the Federal Sanctuary System. 
 
 While broadly accepting the recommendations of ethologically appropriate facilities, NIH did not accept, due to the lack of scientific consensus, the recommendation that the primary living space of research chimpanzees be at least 1,000 square feet per chimpanzee. NIH will engage chimpanzee behavior and facilities experts to determine the appropriate minimum space requirement for research chimpanzees. 
 
 “Today’s decision by NIH culminates more than two years of intensive deliberations among NIH leadership, independent chimpanzee experts, researchers, bioethicists, and members of the public,” said James M. Anderson, M.D., Ph.D., NIH deputy director for program coordination, planning, and strategic initiatives, whose division oversees the NIH Chimpanzee Management Program. “We are grateful to all who have contributed their insight and expertise during the advisory process.” 
 
 NIH’s full response to the recommendations and public comments can be found here: http://dpcpsi.nih.gov/council/working_group.aspx. 
 
 The events that led to today’s decision by NIH are: 
 
 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) recently issued a proposed rule (PDF - 695KB) that lists captive chimpanzees as endangered. NIH expects to adapt its policies for research projects using chimpanzees to comply with the conservation guidelines that the USFWS establishes in a potential final rule. 
 
 For images and video related to this release, visit http://www.nih.gov/news/chimpanzees/index.htm. 
 
 The Office of the Director, the central office at NIH, is responsible for setting policy for NIH, which includes 27 Institutes and Centers. This involves planning, managing, and coordinating the programs and activities of all NIH components. The Office of the Director also includes program offices which are responsible for stimulating specific areas of research throughout NIH. Additional information is available at http://www.nih.gov/icd/od. 
 
 About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov. 
 
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– The NIH is drastically reducing its research on chimps, a move that animal rights advocates hail as humane and long overdue. They've got it exactly backward, writes the director of a research center affected by the move. What they fail to consider is that chimp research doesn't just benefit humans, it benefits wild chimps and gorillas as well, writes John VandeBerg in the New York Times. "It could even help those species from becoming extinct." VandeBerg runs down a list of diseases—including Ebola, chimpanzee AIDS, and especially respiratory diseases caught from humans— that are decimating ape populations around the world. All are treatable with vaccines, but those vaccines won't be as effective without animal testing. Yes, advancements have reduced the need for animals in research, but they haven't eliminated it. The NIH concedes the point in its decision to keep 50 chimps in the program, but that's not enough. The bottom line is that "the benefits of such research outweigh the costs," writes VandeBerg. Click for his full column.