“Anybody with half a heart could understand that this is a very bad deal for these feeling beings. Waking up every day at the same place where these horrible things happened, it's not right.” – Gene Grant

 

It’s been almost a decade since the National Institutes of Health ended the use of chimpanzees for biomedical research. But today we still have scores of chimpanzees sitting in labs. They’re not being tested on, but they are still waiting to be moved into a sanctuary.

This is happening even though there is a law in place that established a federal sanctuary system to provide lifetime care for chimpanzees retired from medical research.

 

26 of these former research chimpanzees live in the Alamogordo Primate Facility on Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. I asked Gene Grant, the chief program and policy officer for Animal Protection New Mexico, to come on the show and talk about why all these years later, these chimps have still not been moved to a sanctuary. And how that changes.

 

LINKS

Animal Protection New Mexico https://apnm.org/

Chimp Haven https://chimphaven.org/donate/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/23/science/chimpanzees-research-retirement.html