CASE NUMBER: 481

CASE MNEMONIC: CHIMP

CASE NAME: Chimpanzee Trade and Medical Research

• IDENTIFICATION
• LEGAL CLUSTERS
• GEOGRAPHIC CLUSTERS
• TRADE CLUSTERS
• ENVIRONMENT CLUSTERS
• OTHER FACTORS

I. Identification

1. The Issue

Over the last two decades, the wild chimpanzees of Africa have stood amidst a sea of turmoil surrounding their own existence. Conservationists and biomedical researchers struggle to establish some middle ground concerning the protection and treatment of chimpanzees. Primatologists like Jane Goodall have fought to protect wild chimpanzees and their natural habitat for fear of their extinction. However, scientists have fought for the right to use animals, specifically the chimpanzee, in their experiments to further their own research on certain human diseases. Chimpanzees are man's closest relatives within the Primate order, which makes them an excellent specimen for research on human disease. Yet, the chimpanzee population has steadily decreased over the last ten years. In December of 1988 the status of wild chimpanzees was upgraded from threatened to endangered. Do we protect the wild chimpanzees not only from the environmental dangers involving the deforestation of the rainforests in which they live, but also from the growing high profit business of medical research?

2. Description

Chimpanzees, commonly referred to as chimps, are members of the great ape family Pongidae, and are classified taxonomically into one species, yet they are divided into three subspecies within the genus Pan. These subspecies are more generally classified by the region of occupation like the common chimpanzee of continental Europe called tschego (Pan troglodytes); or the masked chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) known as the common chimp in Great Britain; and the eastern, or long-haired, chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii). They usually range in size from 3 to 5.5 feet tall and weigh about 55-130 pounds. Male chimps tend to be larger and more robust than the females, and they both are covered in a coat of black or brown hair, but their faces are bare. They inhabit the tropical rainforests and woodland savannas of equatorial Africa from the outer border of Gambia in the west to Lake Albert, Lake Victoria, and northwestern Tanzania in the east. (Shown by the shaded areas in the map below.)

Chimpanzees are described as the most adaptable of the great apes, living in diverse habitats ranging from rain and montane forests to dry woodlands. Those chimps that live in the low-altitude tropical rainforests experience little change in temperature from season to season, and there may be only a few dry days during the year. However, those chimps in the northern regions, and some southeastern limits of their range in Tanzania, which are more dry and arid, experience as many as seven dry months out of the year(Goodall, 10) The chimpanzee easily adapts to diverse terrain, but still faces critical issues for survival. The classic problems of survival for the wild chimpanzee are finding food, escaping predators and parasites, and avoiding bad weather. Their location alone makes them susceptible to many external dangers, one of which is the increasing human population and need for the valuable hard woods that exist within the rainforests. Up until the arly 1980's, these problems, although challenging, were conceivably dealt with in an objective manner, but they are no match for the moral and ethical debates which plague humane societies and biomedical researchers of today.

The debate surrounding the use of animals for medical research is by no means a new topic for discussion. Scientists have used animals as part of their research since the early 1800's, and have successfully utilized animals within their research since the beginning of the 1900's to produce life saving drugs and vaccinations. For example, since 1900, yearly deaths per 100,000 people from what were then the 10 leading killer diseases, have been reduced from 580 to 30 (Miller, Value). Therefore, the usefulness of animal testing has been proven in many instances to save human lives; however, the new challenge for researchers today involves finding the cure for the human disease AIDS, Aquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Some may question why chimpanzees are researchers' natural choice for testing and experimentation, but DNA testing proves that the chimpanzee is biologically our closest living relative, and they are the only animals, besides humans, which are susceptible to infection by HIV. In viewing the similar strands of DNA, researchers attest that chimpanzees may hold the key to finding a cure for the disease. They admit the likelyhood of finding a cure for AIDS is greater if studied on a similar creature, since the virus attacks the immune system and nests within the blood cells of humans. Although researchers have clearly stated the vital importance of using chimpanzees in their studies, problems result from their usage.

Some researchers that are members of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, like Wendy Thacher disagree with the use of chimpanzees for AIDS research. Thacher points out that experimenters have been infecting chimps with the HIV virus since 1984, and none of the chimpanzees thus far have become clinically ill. Experiments which have infected several chimpanzees with strains of the virus that specifically target the cells that are thought to be most active in protecting the body from HIV infection, while simultaneously being infected with other viruses which were presumed to help HIV gain a foothold have showed no progress. Why has this been the case? Although scientists have proven that chimpanzees are viable research specimens due to their DNA structure, some physicians explain that chimpanzees have a higher ratio of T8 lymphcytes to T4 lymphocytes. T lymphocytes play a crucial role in defending the body against disease organisms, through the cell-mediated immune response. When the human body becomes infected with the HIV virus the number of T4 lymphocytes reduces and leads to the breakdown of the immune system. Since the chimpanzee has a greater number of T8 cells compared to T4 cells, even though the infected chimpanzees have shown a decrease in T4 cells, they have not exhibited the dramatic depletion characteristic of the human infection (Thacher, Test Results). Chimpanzees also have exhibited a more powerful antibody response to HIV than most human patients. They tend to destroy infected cells earlier in the course of the disease than humans. Therefore, should medical researchers continue their research on chimpanzees, if they seem to be so different?

Many doctors who treat AIDS patients and the patients who currently are infected with the disease would answer yes to that question. Doctors say that a person with the HIV virus can live 10 to 15 years with the virus without exhibiting any visible signs of AIDS. For this reason, researchers feel that long term testing is required, meaning that it is too soon to judge the chimpanzee research as a failure. Although no chimpanzees are "clinically ill" does not mean that the infection will not show a likeness to the human disease AIDS. Already noted above, chimpanzees did show a depletion of T4 lymphocytes which is characteristic of the human infection, and with time more similarities may occur. Therefore, there is hope that these medical studies will help provide insight into the cure for AIDS.

In conjunction to AIDS testing, chimpanzees have been used in a variety of experiments including experiments to test possible Hepatitis B treatments. However, Wendy Thacher states that these experiments were not successful due to the differences again between human manifestations of the disease and the chimpanzees' reaction to human strains. More studies involve using chimpanzees to study Atherosclerosis, Orthopedics, Dentition, Kidney Function, Hypertension, and other human sickness. One must admit at this point that chimpanzees are not the sole aim of medical research though. In 1982, 1.5 million warm-blooded animals were used in research, excluding rats and mice. Approximately 4.5 million rats and 11 million mice were used. These figures have outraged the humane society; yet the humane society is responsible for killing 10 million dogs and cats each year. Therefore, scientists question whether the usage of a few more specimens to help stop human suffering is so inhumane when the humane society itself kills more "pets" than they do in one year Miller, Neal E..

Since 1977, The United States has prohibited the importation of chimpanzees caught in the wild under the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). However, many African countries were not members of CITES, or could not enforce the legislation, and thus wild chimpanzees continued to enter the United States, which contains 80 percent of the world's captive chimpanzees. The ruling of the convention did not apply to chimps in captivity entering the U.S.; therefore, the number of chimpanzees, which were caught in the wild, held captive in laboratories, and then sold to American research labs was increasing. If the countries within Africa could not regulate the trade of chimpanzees, and as long as the chimps were deemed as captive laboratory chimps, the ruling of the CITES convention was useless in halting the trade of chimpanzees for medical research purposes. Conservationists wanted all chimpanzees classified as endangered to help stop the depletion of wild chimpanzee populations. The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) stated that the number of chimpanzees living in the wild has dwindled to between 150,000 and 200,000 (Ezzell, 511). Truly, the chimpanzee was in danger of becoming extinct in the wild with numbers rapidly plumating. It was not until December 1988, that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service upgraded the status of the African chimpanzee from threatened to endangered. This ruling made it illegal for the U.S. to import any chimp from Africa, including those from captive breeding laboratories. It also closed a major loophole for the conservationists who wanted to limit usage of chimps for biomedical research. Yet, the battle was and still is far from over.

The increasing difficulty of importing primates for research not only forced the U.S. to establish alternative mechanisms for acquiring research specimens, but the European countries as well. As the U.S. enforced its import ban on African chimps, researchers in the U.S. and Europe were establishing breeding colonies of their own. Simultaneously, Malaysia banned the export of primates for research making the availability of chimpanzees scarce. They did this mainly due to suspicions that monkeys being exported to the U.S. were being used for biochemical and nuclear weapons research Primate Supply Shrinks. However, military research accounts for only 15 percent of the 20,000 primates used each year in the United States and only 12 percent of the 3,000 used in Britain. The majority of the research is devoted to developing vaccines. Establishing these breeding colonies has not been as economically viable as one would hope though, and has caused more ethical and moral problems than imaginable.

Some 2,000 chimpanzees are maintained in U.S. laboratories, and of those approximately 100 chimps are born each year to captive mothers (Thacher, Test Results). Although this number may seem sufficient to sustain medical research for quite some time, it is not. In fact, many pharmaceutical industries do not want chimpanzees that have been raised in the lab because they have been exposed to various diseases and antibiotics which would skew the results of their own drug testing. Once, the chimpanzees have been exposed to such viruses and diseases they may never again be released into the wild for fear that they may infect the remaining wild population. Therefore, the medical research labs are responsible for caring for the chimp throughout the duration of his or her life, which can be as costly as $300,000 a chimp, based on a life expectancy of 50 years. This seems like an exorbitant amount of money, yet it only covers the base expense (which amounts to a total cost of $12 million a year for the U.S.) of the chimp during its lifetime. It does not cover the "acquisition costs", if any apply, which means if the chimps were bought at market price. In 1989, the price for a good chimpanzee specimen was about $25,000. This fostered the poaching of chimpanzees and allowed the black market to run rampant, endangering the wild chimpanzees even more.

Although one can clearly see the terrible plight of the wild chimpanzee, can one really rationalize terminating all biomedical experiments on chimpanzees? This is the debate that conservationists and researchers have discussed for over fourteen years. As discussed above, one can see the perspective of the conservationist trying to save our closest relative from near extinction. However, on the other hand, if we were to cease research on the chimpanzee, the medical profession would lack viable methods for testing possible human responses to drugs and disease interaction. For example, the dreaded polio disease that was very prevalent in the early 1900's was infamous for taking the lives of children. However, scientists discovered a vaccination for polio, only after experimenting with 1.5 million primates. Although this is an incredible number, the vaccination alone saved the lives of over 50,000 children the first year it was introduced. Now, no one worries about polio because of a simple vaccination received as a child. What price can be placed on such advancements in technology?

Today, one of the largest epidemics sweeping the U.S., Africa, and hundreds of other countries is Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Researchers began searching for a cure in 1984, and have been working non-stop since then to find a cure, as the number of people who die each year from the disease increases each year. Surely, finding a cure for AIDS would be worth the $120 million spent per year maintaining chimpanzees. However, how does one reconcile the cost of human life with the cost of animal life? The moral and ethical questions posed by the Humane Society are endless, and there are no definitive answers. Human life is precious, but not so precious as to eliminate our closest living relative from the planet. Researchers and Conservationists still search for some middle ground to save the wild chimpanzee, as well as save human lives.

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Keyword Clusters

(1): Trade Products= Primates

(2): Bio-geography= AFRICA

(3): Environmental Problem= Species Endangerment

4. Draft Author:

II. Legal Clusters

5. Discourse and Status:

The U.S. has signed the CITES treaty establishing an import ban on African chimpanzees. They have, along with the other CITES members agreed to the protection of the chimpanzee and its natural habitat.

6. Forum and Scope:

The case involves Africa and its indigenous population of chimpanzees. The CITES convention has acted directly on the issue establishing import bans on wild chimpanzees along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The ban affects Africa and the U.S. directly, but the case is multilateral in scope affecting all the parties of the CITES and the international community as a whole. The international medical community especially is affected by the scope of the decision.

7. Decision Breadth:

Specifically, the ban has far reaching implications for the medical research community and the African communities in which the chimpanzees reside. For many Africans, the adult chimpanzees are still sought for food, and now the the agreement of a large part of the international community, along with tracking wild chimpanzee populations has aided in their survival. These animals are listed in Appendix I of CITES.

8. Legal Standing:

III. Geographic Clusters

9. Geographic Locations

a. Geographic Domain: AFRICA

b. Geographic Site: WEST AFRICA TO NORTHEASTERN Tanzania

c. Geographic Impact: AFRICA

10. Sub-National Factors:

11. Type of Habitat:

IV. Trade Clusters

12. Type of Measure:

The import ban issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in December of 1988, did much to stop the importation of wild chimpanzees from Africa, but established a huge demand in the black market for non-laboratory chimps. Although, the treaties and laws protecting the chimps are in place, they do not replace the huge demand for non-infected chimps for medical research. The breeding colonies within the U.S. do not fully supply the needs of pharmaceutical companies that want chimps which have never been exposed to laboratory testing for their new drug testing programs.

13. Direct v. Indirect Impacts:

There is a direct ban on the trade of chimpanzees born in the wild. However, indirectly the ban has led to over-breeding in the U.S. and raised many issues governing the humane treatment of chimps within laboratories. In conjunction with the breeding issue, the black market price has risen for chimps caught in the wild, so much so, that the threat of being caught is no longer as great a deterrent.

14. Relation of Trade Measure to Environmental Impact

a. Directly Related to Product: YES CHIMP

b. Indirectly Related to Product: NO

c. Not Related to Product: NO

d. Related to Process: YES MORAL

15. Trade Product Identification:

The benefits of vaccinations against human disease seem priceless to the individuals whose life the drug saved. Therefore, many human emotions become entangled when trying to decipher between the actual cost of the chimp's life as compared to the cost of human lives saved by the invention of such medicines and vaccinations.

16. Economic Data

The cost of maintaining about 2,000 chimpanzees in laboratories in the U.S. is about $120 million a year. If the chimps were purchased off the black market, it would cost approximately $25,000 a chimp; however, since the import ban on all African wild chimpanzees, the U.S. has been forced to breed their own chimpanzee population. Therefore, if you were to look at the money it costs to maintain 2,000 chimpanzees ($120 million) and compare it to the price of purchasing 2,000 chimpanzees off the black market ($50 million), the difference is about $70 million. thus, the U.S. pays about $70 million (a year) difference to raise, maintain, and breed chimpanzees in order to protect wild African chimpanzees.

17. Impact of Trade Restriction:

The impact of the trade restrictions governing AFRICAN chimps has had enormous repercussions for the medical industry. The high cost for raising chimps from birth until their death (approximately 35-50 years) has raised operating costs for medical facilities and hampered the development of new medical technologies. The search for non-laboratory chimps for pharmaceutical companies increases the problem of high bounties for wild chimps.

18. Industry Sector:

19. Exporters and Importers:

As for specific figures as to the exact number of chimpanzees exported and imported each year, the statistics are unclear. However, the five largest importers and exporters of primates are shown in the table below. (General figures during the early 1990's)

V. Environment Clusters

20. Environmental Problem Type:

Species loss is of course the major problem surrounding the survival of chimpanzees. However, the depletion of the rainforests in which they live is also a crucial element pertaining to their survival. The valuable hard woods that exist in these rainforests are sought for trade; therefore, the chimpanzees are losing the luscious trees that they depend on for shelter and food. Also, as sporadic civil warfare breaks out in some of these areas within Africa, some adult chimpanzees are sought for food, which makes enforcing protection laws impossible.

21. Name, Type, and Diversity of Species

Name: CHIMPANZEE

Type: MAMMAL

Diversity: There are between 150,000 and 200,000 chimpanzees living in the wild in the tropical rainforests and savannas of Africa.

22. Resource Impact and Effect:

23. Urgency and Lifetime:

HIGH, some estimate and predict that without drastic protective measures, the chimp will be extinct in the wild as early as 2002. Their life expectancy is about 50 years.

24. Substitutes:

The genetic quality of the chimpanzee makes it a valuable specimen. Gorillas and orangatangs are also similar, but they face the same extinction ratios as the chimpanzee. In fact, the orangatang is perhaps the most endangered of the three species mentioned. Therefore, there are no readily available substitutes with the genetic quality like that of the chimpanzee.

VI. Other Factors

Experimental Infection of Chimpanzees with Lymphadenopathy-Associated Virus

Ezzell, Carol. "Wild Chimpanzees Upgraded to Endangered Species." Nature 8, Decemer 1988: 511.

Goodall, Jane. The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1986.

Kavanagh, Michael. A Complete Guide to Monkeys, Apes and Other Primates. London: Jonathan Cape Limited, 1983.

Miller, Neal E.

Primate Supply Shrinks

Prince, Alfred M., et al. "Chimpanzees and AIDS Research." Nature 9, June 1988: 513.

"To Save the Wild Chimps." Scientific News 11 March 1989: 155.

Thacher, Wendy. "Test Results that Don't Apply to Humans." Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine Web Page.

Wrangham, Richard W., eds. et al, Chimpanzee Cultures. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press and Chicago Academy of Sciences, 1994.