The Ethics of Using Chimpanzees in Scientific Research - Essay Example

Clearly, there is no fundamental ethical question about using animals, including both the great apes and human beings, in trials and research. Some processes can only be done with live subjects. For humans, a process of informed consent is used to ensure that the rights of individuals are not compromised, but with chimps, this is clearly impossible, since chimps do not have the language skills to understand what is proposed, or to express their views.

 In 1994 a meeting of scientists debated the use of chimpanzees in AIDS research and it concluded that the necessity was there, due to a lack of alternatives, and that it was acceptable to conduct research such as giving injections and collecting blood samples, so long as financial support for long term retirement of the chimps afterward is guaranteed. (Akker et al, 1994, p. 51) This amounts to an acceptance of quite invasive research in return for some welfare reward later.

In 2010 scientists studying genomes and human lineage-specific (HLS) sequences of unknown function considered the use of transgenic techniques with great apes (chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas) but concluded that this would cause harm to the apes and that “these harms render the conduct of this research ethically unacceptable in apes, justifying regulatory barriers between these species and all other non-human primates for transgenic research.”  (Coors et al., 2010), p. 658.

These two articles demonstrate that while it would certainly be useful to use chimps in research, and many scientists are currently involved in such work, there are increasing reservations about it and that ultimately the benefits which could be gained in this way are likely to be a) obtainable using human volunteers and b) not sufficiently essential and valuable as to justify the high cost to the animal subjects.