Campaign Updates: The Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act (GAPCSA) gained more support in the 112th Congress than any previous session. PCRM worked closely with members of Congress and the Humane Society of the United States to facilitate the first Senate hearing and vote on the legislation. By the end of the session, GAPCSA was voted out of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and was supported by nearly 200 co-sponsors in the House and Senate.
We will continue to push for an end to the use of chimpanzees in experiments and their retirement to sanctuary in the 113th Congress when the legislation is reintroduced.
After PCRM rallied members of Congress to ensure that 100 chimpanzees “retired” by the National Institutes of Health go to sanctuary instead of a laboratory, the agency decided to retire all of the chimpanzees to Chimp Haven sanctuary. More >
The Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act makes sense—ethically, scientifically, and financially. Key provisions of the bill will:
- Phase out the use of chimpanzees in invasive research
- Release the more than 500 federally owned chimpanzees to sanctuaries
- Prohibit future breeding of chimpanzees for purposes of conducting invasive research
Many of the chimpanzees currently living in U.S. laboratories were captured from the wild as infants and have spent several decades in cages the size of a kitchen table, subject to repeated invasive procedures and breeding. Just imagine what it would be like to spend 50 to 60 years trapped inside a 5-by-7-by-7 cage. Research funding would be better spent on superior, 21st-century methods.
Stand with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in support of the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act (H.R. 1513/S. 810). Support ethics. Support sound science. Support fiscal responsibility. Support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act (H.R. 1513/S. 810) today.
THE GREAT APE PROTECTION AND COST SAVINGS ACT is:
- The Institute of Medicine recently released a report in which they found that chimpanzee experiments are not necessary to advance human health.
- Although chimpanzees are our closest genetic relatives, significant genetic and physiological differences between humans and chimpanzees render them poor models for human health research.
- Noninvasive genomic and behavioral research is permitted under the legislation and could be accomplished in sanctuaries and other natural settings.
- The United States is the only nation still using chimpanzees in large-scale invasive research.
- Many of the 1,000 chimpanzees in laboratories have been there since birth and have never known the feeling of grass on their feet or a world without walls.
- This bill will save $250 million over 10 years by phasing out the use of chimpanzees in invasive experiment.