himpanzees often live more than 50 years, but when research chimps' days in the lab are over, they have nowhere to go. They live out their lives in research centers at the cost of about $16 a day.

Last December, Congress approved a retirement plan for research chimps, authorizing Health and Human Services to spend $30 million to set up sanctuaries for some 1,600 research chimps no longer involved in studies.

"The Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Maintenance, and Protection (CHIMP) bill represents not only a humane way to treat these animals, but also a cost-effective one," wrote Tom Gordon, interim director of Yerkes Primate Research Center, in a testimonial to Congress. "Given that the biomedical community has bred and supported chimpanzees for use in research, and that the public has benefited from such use, it is our ethical responsibility to support the CHIMP bill."

About half of the 185 chimps at Yerkes, one of eight institutions that make up NIH's primate research programs, are no longer involved in research. Sending these chimps to retirement sanctuaries would free up resources for ongoing research. Retired chimps would live out their days among social groups in a more natural and less expensive environment.

The chimp surplus is rooted in an NIH breeding program undertaken in the 1980s to satisfy an expected demand for chimpanzees in HIV trials. But macaque and mangabey monkeys were better suited for studying HIV and other diseases, so chimp use has declined drastically in all biomedical research.

Details of the sanctuary system, such as exactly who will manage and pay for it, where it will be located, and which chimps will be admitted, still must be hammered out. The bill was an unhappy compromise between NIH officials and animal rights activists, who sought permanent retirement from research for the chimps. The law now allows research on these retired chimps in extraordinary circumstances and after a lengthy approval period. NIH had hoped to have surplus chimps available for future research if need arose. The defined procedure makes that prospect unlikely.

A rigorous procedure is already required by law to conduct any research using chimpanzees. When then President Bill Clinton signed the CHIMP bill, he noted that it gave insufficient weight to important public health issues and could prevent or delay valuable biomedical research. The bill also virtually eliminates any federal role in the operation or oversight of the system, although the federal government remains responsible for the welfare of the chimpanzees accepted into the system.

Chimp research at the Living Links Center at Yerkes involves comparisons of the social life, ecology, cognition, neurology, and molecular genetics of apes and humans. Also at the nation's oldest and largest primate center, Yerkes scientists are pioneering new treatments for AIDS, vision loss, drug abuse, Parkinson's disease, and cardiovascular disease.

For more information about Emory research involving chimps, check www.cc.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS. To learn about a private chimpanzee sanctuary recently established in Louisiana, check the web site www.chimphaven.org.

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