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FILE - In this Jan. 31, 1961 file photo, Ham, the first higher primate launched into outer space, is comforted by an unidentified man on the deck of a rescue ship after the splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean. Chimpanzees should hardly ever be used for medical research, a prestigious scientific group told the government Thursday _ advice that means days in the laboratory may be numbered for humans' closest relatives. The Institute of Medicine stopped short of recommending the outright ban that animal rights activists had pushed. Instead, it urged strict limits that would make invasive experiments with chimps essentially a last resort, saying today's more advanced research tools mean the primates' use only rarely will be necessary enough to outweigh the moral costs. (AP Photo, File)

FILE - In this Jan. 31, 1961 file photo, Ham, the first higher primate launched into …

FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Wildlife Waystation shows Booie the chimpanzee, who died Saturday, Dec. 11, 2011, at age 44, while being treated for a heart condition. Booie kicked a smoking habit at the animal sanctuary near Los Angeles, where he had lived since 1995, after retiring from a research lab. A prestigious scientific group told the U.S. government Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011, that chimpanzees should hardly ever be used for medical research. The Institute of Medicine stopped short of recommending the outright ban that animal rights activists had pushed. Instead, it urged strict limits that would make invasive experiments with chimps essentially a last resort, saying today's more advanced research tools mean the primates' use only rarely will be necessary enough to outweigh the moral costs. (AP Photo/Wildlife Waystation, Dave Welling, File)

FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Wildlife Waystation shows Booie the …

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The body of executive officers on Thursday said it would adopt exact new limits on using chimpanzees in medical research, after a prestigious scientific collection recommended that experiments with humans' closest relevant be done only as a hold out resort.

The National Institutes of Health agreed that science has advanced enough that chimps seldom would be needed to help lay open new medicines.

NIH Director Francis Collins temporarily barred renovated federal funding for research involving chimps, and said a working group will review concerning 37 ongoing projects involving the animals to escort if they should be phased on the ~side.

Chimps' similarity to people "demands appropriate consideration and respect," Collins said.

These apes' genetic closeness to humans has lingering caused a quandary. It's what has made them so valuable to scientists ~ the sake of nearly a century. They were necessary to life in creating a vaccine for hepatitis B, in spite of example, and even were shot into short time to make sure the trip wouldn't murder the astronauts next in line.

But that end relationship also has had animal rights groups arguing that using chimps against biomedical research is unethical, even hard-hearted.

Chimp research already was dwindling go without food as scientists turned to less rich and ethically charged alternatives.

Thursday's judgment was triggered by an uproar endure year over the fate of 186 semi-retired research chimps that the NIH, to be in time for money, planned to move from a New Mexico ductility to an active research lab in Texas.

Where and by what means to house those animals — and others strewn around the country who probably none longer will be needed — are among the issues that Collins said a body of executive officers working group will decide as it determines in what condition to implement the new research restrictions.

The Institute of Medicine's approval on Thursday stopped short of the wholly ban that animal rights activists had pushed. Instead, it urged stringent limits on biomedical research — testing reinvigorated drugs or giving animals a complaint — that would allow using chimps no other than if studies could not be transacted on other animals or people themselves, and admitting that foregoing the chimp work would thwart progress against life-threatening or debilitating provisions.

The panel advised the government to bound use of chimps in behavioral and genetic scrutiny as well, saying such studies grape-juice provide insights that otherwise are inaccessible — and use techniques that minimize at all pain or distress.

"We understand and be moved compelled by the moral cost of using chimpanzees in research," said bioethicist Jeffrey Kahn of Johns Hopkins University, who chaired the Institute of Medicine panel. "We have established criteria that pleasure set the bar quite high on the side of justification of the use of chimpanzees."

The U.S. is single in kind of only two countries known to continually conduct medical research with chimpanzees; the other is Gabon, in Africa. The European Union essentially banned like research last year.

Here, too, the usage was becoming uncommon. The Institute of Medicine's study found over the past 10 years, the NIH has paid on the side of just 110 projects of any form that involved chimps. There are not considerably 1,000 chimps available for sanatory research in the country.

While it's incapable of occurring to say how many have been used in secretly funded pharmaceutical research, the industry is shifting to higher-tech and ~ amount costly research methods. One drug visitors, GlaxoSmithKline, adopted an official policy ending its use of great apes, including chimpanzees, in scrutiny.

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