NIH announces end to support for invasive research on chimpanzees

The US National Institutes of Health has announced an end to the support for invasive research on chimpanzees and retired the 50 chimps it had held over for biomedical research.

The decision, announced on Wednesday, draws the curtain on a controversy regarding federally funded primate experimentation and comes after a 2013 decision by the NIH to retire all but 50 of its chimpanzees to animal sanctuaries.

Dr Francis S Collins, the director of the NIH said after two and a half years, no proposal requesting use of the remaining chimpanzees had moved forward.

''We find no evidence that there is a need to continue to do research of an invasive sort on chimpanzees - not now, and not going into the future.''

He cited two events that had led to the decision, the first being an independent assessment published in 2011 that investigated the usefulness of chimpanzees for biomedical research.

The report led the agency to retire many of its chimpanzees in 2013 and introduce stricter requirements for research with the primates.

After his email to the NIH staff was leaked to the media earlier this week, agency director Collins told Science magazine, ''… I think it's fair to say the scientific community has come up with other ways to answer the kinds of questions they used to ask with chimpanzees.''

The primates had been used in tests for nearly a century on wide range of subjects. Due to their genetic similarities to humans, they can be infected by nearly all human diseases.

They also share human traits and live in extended families, construct tools and seem to experience empathy and grief.

Most countries have banned research on chimpanzees in recent years due to their intelligence and their similarities to humans. In 2013, the US Fish and Wildlife Service gave research chimps endangered-species protection which meant that scientists were barred from conducting stressful or invasive research on the primates, unless the work benefited chimps in the wild.