PRBuzz
12-21-2011, 08:56 AM
Not only do criminals most times have more legal rights, now chimpanzee's status elevated above humans!
When Dr. Francis S. Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, announced Thursday that the government would halt all new grants for research on chimpanzees, it was, in one sense, a familiar Washington moment.
In another sense, however, this was a profound step. The N.I.H. is the source of a river of money that flows into labs around the country where animals in the millions are, to misuse the words of an old Arlo Guthrie song, “injected, inspected, detected, infected” and a few other things, all in the cause of increasing knowledge and alleviating human suffering, of course.
The criteria get even stickier when it comes down to cases, as made clear by the committee’s consideration of one line of research, the attempt to develop a preventive vaccine for the hepatitis C virus, or HCV. Chronic infection with the virus is the most common reason for liver failure and liver transplants. More than three million Americans, and 130 million to 170 million people in the world, have chronic HCV infections. Each year about 17,000 Americans become infected.
Some experiments on safety and efficacy for potential HCV vaccines can be done only in humans or chimps because these are the only two species that the virus infects. When it came down to whether chimpanzees were necessary for the final stages of testing, the committee members could not agree. They deadlocked, 5 to 5.
The committee could not agree whether it was necessary to have a final test in chimps before an HCV vaccine is tried in humans. A vaccine could go straight to humans in high-risk groups, who would be monitored over time. But that would take years, and most new infections in developed countries are in intravenous drug users, not an easy population to monitor, and one that poses its own ethical problems. The report doesn’t mention this particular problem, but one can’t help but wonder how to define “informed consent” when the experimental subject is an addict.
When Dr. Francis S. Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, announced Thursday that the government would halt all new grants for research on chimpanzees, it was, in one sense, a familiar Washington moment.
In another sense, however, this was a profound step. The N.I.H. is the source of a river of money that flows into labs around the country where animals in the millions are, to misuse the words of an old Arlo Guthrie song, “injected, inspected, detected, infected” and a few other things, all in the cause of increasing knowledge and alleviating human suffering, of course.
The criteria get even stickier when it comes down to cases, as made clear by the committee’s consideration of one line of research, the attempt to develop a preventive vaccine for the hepatitis C virus, or HCV. Chronic infection with the virus is the most common reason for liver failure and liver transplants. More than three million Americans, and 130 million to 170 million people in the world, have chronic HCV infections. Each year about 17,000 Americans become infected.
Some experiments on safety and efficacy for potential HCV vaccines can be done only in humans or chimps because these are the only two species that the virus infects. When it came down to whether chimpanzees were necessary for the final stages of testing, the committee members could not agree. They deadlocked, 5 to 5.
The committee could not agree whether it was necessary to have a final test in chimps before an HCV vaccine is tried in humans. A vaccine could go straight to humans in high-risk groups, who would be monitored over time. But that would take years, and most new infections in developed countries are in intravenous drug users, not an easy population to monitor, and one that poses its own ethical problems. The report doesn’t mention this particular problem, but one can’t help but wonder how to define “informed consent” when the experimental subject is an addict.