Rest assured that the government is determined to prevent the events from Rise of the Planet of the Apes from unfolding. Kidding aside, the government aims to ensure humane treatment of chimpanzees. The National Institutes of Health announced that they won’t give out new grants for biomedical and behavioral research on chimps because they deserve “special consideration and respect.” The organization acted on a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine that concluded most chimp research is unnecessary.

The New York Times reports the Humane Society cheered the announcement.

Chimps haven’t quite been liberated from the test labs just yet. The NIH could potentially allow funding for chimps to be used for research when the ends are deemed key to ensuring human health and can’t be reached any other way. Chimps may possibly still be used, for instance, to research a vaccine that prevents hepatitis C.

It goes without saying that injecting chimps with serums that allow them to talk and form armies would be bad for ensuring human health.

U.S. Will Not Finance New Research on Chimps [The New York Times]

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