Should the United States remain the only country apart from Gabon to fund chimpanzee research? The membership of an Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee recently asked to pronounce on that question was made public yesterday, three weeks in advance of the group’s inaugural meeting.
The Committee on the Use of Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research will spend the next eight months studying whether the US, through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), should continue to fund the controversial research, which takes place at four primate centers supported by the agency. (NIH also supports a fifth center, the Alamogordo Primate Facility, which houses chimps but does not conduct research.)
The 15-member panel aims to issue a report by the end of December. Its first meeting will take place in Washington on 26 and 27 May.
John Stobo (pictured), a medical doctor who is the senior vice president for health sciences and services for the University of California, will chair the committee. Other members include Floyd Bloom, the former editor-in-chief of Science; Alan Leshner, who, as chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is currently the journal’s publisher; Letti Medina, the associate director of animal welfare and compliance at Abbott Laboratories; and Margaret Landi, the vice president of global laboratory animal sciences and chief of animal welfare for GlaxoSmithKline, which in 2008 voluntarily stopped using chimpanzees in its research. The panel does not have representation from any animal welfare or rights group.
The NIH in January asked the IOM, an arm of the independent National Academies, to conduct an “in-depth analysis to reassess the scientific need for the continued use of chimpanzees to accelerate biomedical discoveries.” The agency was responding to protests sparked by its move to bring 186 aging chimps currently housed at the Alamogordo Primate Facility in New Mexico out of retirement and back into active research.
The panel’s members include nine PhDs; five physicians; one bioethicist; and three doctors of veterinary medicine. Also a member is Sharon Terry, a former college chaplain who is CEO of the Genetic Alliance, a Washington-based health advocacy group. (The numbers add up to more than 15 because several members have multiple degrees.)
The chief of one of the chimp research centers applauded the committee’s composition. Thomas Rowell, a veterinarian who directs the New Iberia Research Center, part of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said today that he is “encouraged” by the panel’s makeup.
“There is good representation by individuals directly involved with both basic and applied research with very strong emphasis on human health. It is good to see industry and academia well represented. We should anticipate a thorough and objective review.”
The Washington-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which has been a leading critic of chimpanzee research and of the transfer of the Alomogordo chimps, disagreed. John Pippin, a physician who is the group’s senior medical and research adviser, said that the committee’s membership and its task “raise serious concerns regarding the scope and validity of the committee’s report.”
He added: “In particular, PCRM is very concerned that the IOM has specifically excluded any consideration of the standing of chimpanzees or the ethical aspects of chimpanzee experimentation. Throughout the world, where there are many prohibitions of chimpanzee and great ape experimentation, the balance between purported research benefits and the grievous harm suffered by chimpanzees in research has been a critical factor in implementing those prohibitions. To ignore this element of the debate is to assign chimpanzees nothing more than the status of laboratory equipment.”
The committee’s task, stated here, focuses on determining “if chimpanzees are or will be necessary for research discoveries and to determine the safety and efficacy of new prevention or treatment strategies.” It does not mention ethics or animal welfare explicitly, and concludes by stating that: “The committee will base its findings and recommendations on currently available protocols, published literature, and scientific evidence, as well as its expert judgment.”
After May’s meeting, the panel will hold a session to collect public input in Washington in mid-August and a closed meeting in early October, before delivering its report by the end of the year. More information is available here.
Photo credit: University of California