Louisiana's Chimp Haven sanctuary for retired laboratory chimpanzees is requesting a further US$2.55 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to construct housing for 110 chimps about to retire from the New Iberia Research Center, part of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (Nature 491, 18; 2012). However, the sanctuary has almost hit the NIH funding cap of $30 million, and other facilities are already available at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute's Southwest National Primate Research Center (SNPRC), of which I am director.
The housing at the SNPRC is cost-effective, high quality and similar to some housing at Chimp Haven. The SNPRC also provides extensive enrichment programmes for the animals.
Besides housing, the NIH needs to consider the pressing health-care needs of ageing chimps and the capacity of institutions to meet them.
The SNPRC's medical capabilities are state-of-the-art. For example, four veterinarians are employed for 141 chimps, compared with one for 130 chimps at Chimp Haven. Veterinarians at the SNPRC have 90 years' combined experience working with chimps. And the SNPRC has an on-site pathology lab equipped for testing within minutes of a medical emergency, a facility not available at Chimp Haven.
Given that the vacant facilities at the SNPRC were partly funded by a $1.5-million grant from the NIH, the proposed allocation of scarce federal research dollars to duplicate them at Chimp Haven seems wasteful. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the cost to the taxpayer of transferring the New Iberia animals and 330 other NIH-owned chimps to Chimp Haven would be $56 million over the next 5 years alone.
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J.L.V. is the principal investigator of an NIH grant that provides funding for the care and maintenance of NIH-owned chimpanzees. Funding has been awarded as a supplement to that grant for the purpose of moving the chimpanzees to Texas Biomed and caring for them. If the chimpanzees are moved to Texas Biomed, additional funding will be awarded to care for the chimpanzees as long as they remain at Texas Biomed.
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VandeBerg, J. NIH chimps: use existing facilities. Nature 491, 672 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/491672c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/491672c