Group Cites Conflicts of Interest and Potential Violation of Federal Law
For Immediate Release:
May 11, 2011
Contact:
Robbyn Brooks 202-483-7382
Washington — Earlier today, PETA submitted official comments to the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine (IOM) protesting extreme bias and conflicts of interest in the IOM-convened committee to evaluate whether the U.S. should continue to be the only nation in the industrialized world that continues to allow invasive experiments on chimpanzees. PETA is calling for the current committee to be disbanded and charging that IOM failed to follow the National Academy's own policies pertaining to committee composition and conflicts of interest. The group also asserts that IOM may have violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act, resulting in a committee dominated by entities, including pharmaceutical companies, that have lobbied against legislation to end chimpanzee experimentation and that have a financial interest in seeing the practice continue. Conversely, IOM has stated that nominees representing animal advocacy organizations were immediately discounted, even if they possessed scientific expertise on the matter.
The IOM study was commissioned by the U.S. government after a public outcry halted a misguided plan by the National Institutes of Health to subject 202 retired chimpanzees to invasive and painful infectious disease experiments. IOM has stated that NIH has not asked it to have the panel examine the ethics of experimentation on chimpanzees, even though ethical considerations were the driving force behind the committee's formation and the public's opposition.
"It is appalling that the committee convened to determine whether our tax dollars will continue to fund unethical and cruel experiments on chimpanzees is stacked with people who have political and financial interests in seeing it continue," says PETA Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. "The IOM needs to form an unbiased panel—and it needs to address the ethical concerns that prompted the committee's formation in the first place."
More than 1,000 chimpanzees—humans' closest living genetic relatives—are imprisoned in barren cells in U.S. laboratories and intentionally infected with diseases such as HIV and hepatitis, even though most scientists agree that chimpanzees are poor models for researching human diseases. Although the IOM believes that a study is necessary to evaluate this practice, many people already recognize that it is cruel and archaic. The Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act—new bipartisan legislation to ban invasive experiments on chimpanzees—currently has 50 sponsors in Congress.
For more information, visit PETA.org.