Qualia

A National Institutes of Health (NIH) working group is recommending immediate retirement for nearly all of the agency's 451 chimpanzees.

In a report released January 22, the group urges the NIH to end half of 22 current experiments involving chimps and begin planning the transfer of the animals to federal sanctuaries. The report says keeping a colony of about 50 chimps is sufficient for the possibility of future research, which would have to be approved by an independent committee.