US research chimps savor retirement at new home

Keithville (Louisiana), Feb 20 (AP) For the first time in their lives, four aging chimpanzees once used in US government research can go outside whenever they like. They can lie on the grass, clamber onto a platform on a chimp-style jungle gym and gaze freely at the open sky, the vista unbroken by steel bars. Fifty-two-year-olds Julius and Sandy, 46-year-old Phyllis and 44-year-old Jessica have arrived. These and several other primates are now "living like chimpanzees" as they play, groom each other and tussle at Chimp Haven in Louisiana -- the only national sanctuary for retired federal research chimps. Julius' group is among 111 chimpanzees coming to Chimp Haven over the next 18 months from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's New Iberia Research Center. They could be the vanguard of a much larger immigration of former research chimps. A National Institutes of Health committee recommended on January 22 that most of the other 350 federally owned research chimpanzees be retired to "the federal sanctuary system" -- a system of one. The proposal to retire all but about 50 federally owned chimpanzees is the latest step in a gradual shift away from using chimps as test subjects, owing to technological advances and growing ethical concerns about research on primates that share more than 98 percent of the DNA of humans. Research on the chimps has ranged from psychological studies to trying to develop vaccines for HIV and hepatitis. (AP) SJS ASY 02202011 NNNN