An Austrian judge turned down a request this week to appoint a woman as legal guardian of a chimpanzee.  Read more (Nature.com- subscription needed to read full article)

Project R&R’s In Their Own Words was warmly welcomed by nearly 250 participants at Chicago’s Cultural Center on Thursday, March 22nd. The program brought to life the stories of chimpanzees from research to sanctuary through first-hand accounts by former laboratory caregiver Nancy Megna and Fauna sanctuary leader and Project R&R honorary co-chair Gloria Grow, recently featured on PBS’ NATURE documentary Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History.

Thanks to all our wonderful volunteers who helped to make the evening a great success, including videographer David Aaron, photographer Pat Cummings, and musicians Harry Hmura and Keith Wollenberg for volunteering their wonderful talents!

Project R&R submitted ’07 testimony to the House and Senate Appropriations Committee, asking that no more federal dollars be appropriated to breeding of chimpanzees or any research that involves breeding of chimpanzees.

In addition to our financial argument, we have also noted in the testimony that the public has assumed a ‘hidden tax’, because there are chimpanzees that were federally owned or supported whose lifetime care now falls squarely on the shoulders of private sanctuaries and their caring public donors.

…the caring American public has been burdened with the ethical obligation of some estimated $1.29 billion dollars to care for chimpanzees from laboratories, without any further obligation for this care placed on the laboratories themselves and with none of these privately funded sanctuaries having, at this time, access to federal dollars for their chimpanzee care. Given the American public’s deep and growing concern over the use of chimpanzees in research, the NIH’s history of breeding has created a hidden, even if self-assumed, ‘tax’…

The testimony was signed by Project R&R President Theo Capaldo, EdD, and co-chair Gloria Grow, and other Project R&R advisors.

The submission details other relevant issues, including “surplus” and over-breeding, limitations and dangers of using chimpanzees to study human health and disease as well as quality of care, or lack thereof, for chimpanzees in labs.

Click here to read the testimony.

Presented by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Museum, the festival, the first of its kind in the U.S., encompasses nine days of scientific discovery.

NEAVS/Project R&R is presenting on alternatives to animal research and on the ethical and scientific reasons to end the use of chimpanzees in biomedical research and testing.

This important venue is sure to foster discussion in a city where many institutions and private companies conduct experiments on animals. As Massachusetts is one of three hubs for biomedical research and technology in the U.S., NEAVS/Project R&R is eager to bring our message to the public, students, and educators.

NEAVS/Project R&R will present at the Cambridge Public Library, Central Square Branch, 45 Pearl Street, on Thursday April 26th at 7pm. Open to the public, seating will be limited. Please call us at 617-523-6020 to reserve your free seat now!

The New York Blood Centre’s Vilab facility in Liberia has taken over six islands off the coast of Liberia in West Africa, where 70 chimpanzees from research will be released into sanctuary.  Read more (The Sunday Times, UK)