Ricky Gervais Asks NIH To Return Chimps To Sanctuary
Written by Vegetarian Star on April 19th, 2011 in Actors, Animal Issues, Comedians.
Ricky Gervais would like the National Institutes of Health to return several chimpanzees who were almost retired back to a sanctuary after being moved into a medical research laboratory in Texas.
Gervais was born in England, where licenses for experiments on chimpanzees were banned over a decade ago. Since then, several countries have followed this lead, including New Zealand, the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria and Belgium.
“These amazingly intelligent animals had been used in testing for many years, but that had ended and they were peacefully retired in New Mexico,” Gervais writes. “Then the government abruptly decided to put them back into laboratory cages at Texas Biomed. These individuals have already endured tremendous suffering, and I urge you to allow them to spend the rest of their lives in peace.”
Chimps in laboratories have been used to investigate human medical conditions like brain and spinal injuries, the effects of social deprivation and diseases like HIV and AIDS.
In her book, Through A Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe, famed primatologist Jane Goodall outlined various alternatives to using chimps in research and called for the more humane treatment of the animals that are extremely social and intelligent.
???”Instead of saying “Sadly we shall always need to use some animals for some purposes” we should say “This abuse of animals is not ethical. Let us therefore get together and use our awesome intellect to speed up the day when this practice is a thing of the past,” Goodall writes.
Photo: PR Photos
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