Project Bioshield is a multi-agency government initiative to identify potential bioterrorism threats and develop counter-measures. This project distributes millions of dollars to various agencies and private companies to create drugs from antibodies that neutralize potential bioterrorism threats, such as anthrax.
Project Bioshield has been very successful. In fact, human-based antibody treatments for anthrax are now being produced in large enough quantities to fill the National Stockpile so that American citizens will be protected in the event of a bioterrorism attack.
It seems like this should be the happy ending to the story, but instead it is a classic example of government mismanagement and a tragedy for a group of chimpanzees hidden away in a National Institutes of Health (NIH) laboratory. Despite the millions of dollars that have already been spent—and the fact that we now have several human-based anthrax antibody treatments—a few NIH experimenters are still getting huge amounts of Project Bioshield money to develop new antibodies to anthrax and other diseases.
Although this is clearly a redundant waste of biodefense money that could be going to legitimate efforts, this is not the worst part of the story. Unbelievably, these experimenters have decided to make these antibodies in chimpanzees!
Chimpanzees share so much with humans—including our capacity to learn, feel pain, experience loneliness, and yearn for freedom from captivity. While their antibodies also share some structural similarities with those from humans, antibodies from any other species have the potential to cause deadly allergic reactions in humans.
NIH experimenters confine these sensitive and social animals (sometimes for as long as 20 years) and expose them to horrific diseases and painful bone-marrow extractions to recover antibodies. They then attempt to manipulate these antibodies to look like those of humans so that they won't cause deadly reactions in humans—all this is done despite the fact that human-based antibodies are already available!
These chimpanzee-based antibodies are not needed, and their safety is untested. These animals are suffering for no reason except the greediness and curiosity of a few experimenters and poor oversight by government agencies. PETA sent several letters of concern to government officials and agencies as soon as we heard about this deplorable situation.
Please speak out to oppose these senseless experiments by sending a letter to the director of the NIH urging him to stop these absurd and cruel experiments immediately.
Personalized letters always work best. Feel free to use the following text, but your message will carry more weight if you write your own customized message and subject line.
