Chimpanzees have been experimentally infected with many of the same pathogens and viruses that afflict humans. Recent or current infectious disease research using chimpanzees includes:

Many human infectious diseases cause either only mild symptoms or no illness at all in chimpanzees. The only way to detect whether a chimpanzee has been “infected” is to examine cells for presence of the infectious agent. This is the case with HIV, the range of hepatitis viruses, and others.

Because the course of disease is so radically different in chimpanzees, their use in infectious disease research is to function mostly as a medium in which to grow viruses and antigens – essentially as living test tubes.

Often treatments and/or vaccines developed using chimpanzees are found to be inadequate for human use. Despite genetic similarities between chimpanzees and humans, complex physiological differences exist on the cellular level. For example, researchers have tried – unsuccessfully – for nearly two decades to develop an HIV vaccine using chimpanzees. Even those who champion the use of chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates in HIV research have admitted:

… Because AIDS is a complicated disease involving many molecular events in several different cell types, a vaccination that works in NHPs [nonhuman primates] may not work in humans. (1)

Scientists commonly cite the development of the hepatitis B vaccine as an example of the essential role of chimpanzees in infectious disease research. However, the development of the hepatitis B vaccine amounted to little more than using chimpanzee bodies as test tubes to grow the virus. It did not come about through studying the physiology of the disease in their bodies.

As noted by Americans For Medical Advancement, “If chimpanzees had not been used, the HBV [hepatitis B virus] vaccine would not have been developed as it was. It does not follow that it would not have been developed at all.” (2) The first hepatitis B vaccine was made from the blood of infected humans and is now made from bacterial or yeast culture.

In July 2005, researchers investigating hepatitis C reported a breakthrough in the technology to grow the virus entirely in cell culture (in vitro). (3)

Last update: 1/3/06

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Sources

(1) Sibal, LR and Samson, KJ. 2001. Nonhuman Primates: A Critical Role in Current Disease Research, ILAR Journal V42(2):75.

(2) Greek R, Shanks N, Greek J, “A Scientific Case for the Elimination of Chimpanzees in Research,” Americans for Medical Advancement, 2005

(3) Lindenbach BD, Evans MJ et al, 2005. Complete Replication of Hepatitis C Virus in Cell Culture. Science, July 22 309; 5734:623-626


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