On Tuesday January 22, 2013, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) council released a report on the use of chimpanzees in NIH-supported research, located at http://dpcpsi.nih.gov/council/pdf/FNL_Report_WG_Chimpanzees.pdf, which unanimously recommended to retire all but 50 chimpanzees owned or supported by the NIH, with the remainder to be kept "for the possibility of new research".
The report recommended canceling six of nine biomedical research projects involving immunology and infectious agents, but acknowledged that they could be used for new, emerging, and reemerging diseases. How can a civil society justify the use of any animal, let alone an animal as intelligent as a chimpanzee, as a test subject? I respectfully request the government re-evaluate its stance on chimpanzee testing.