The following CNN animal news video is about a new bill that would prohibit invasive medical research on chimpanzees. It was uploaded to the CNN website on August 10, 2012. This segment originally aired on the Issues With Jane Velez-Mitchell show.
According to this video, there are about 1000 chimpanzees that are still undergoing invasive medical research in the United States. 500 of these chimps are actually owned by the federal government.
Under this law (if it passes), the 500 federally owned animals will go to a sanctuary.
Tax dollars are also going towards this research. According to Jane Velez-Mitchell, the bill can save taxpayers about $300 million over the next 10 years. I’m not sure that is a fair analysis to make because the idea is that society is supposed to get some resulting research benefits from that investment. Nonetheless, the main point of this video is to call for the banning of this medical research on chimpanzees.
The bill has passed through a Senate committee and will now need to pass through the full Senate and the House of Representatives to become law.