Retirement plan for research chimps.

In 1975, an international conservation convention put an end to the importation of chimpanzees from the wild. Since then, biomedical researchers in the United States have relied on the existing population of captive chimps for studies of behavior, cognition, reproduction, and infectious diseases.

In 1986, researchers began breeding those animals in response to an anticipated need for more chimps in AIDS research. Chimpanzees are not easily infected with HIV, however, and so have not proved a good model of the disease in people. Today, the U.S. supply of 1,500 chimpanzees exceeds the research demand. Consequently, the National Institutes of Health requested an advisory report on the management of these animals. That report, released last month by the National Research Council (NRC), recommends that a new NIH office take over the now-splintered ownership and management of the chimpanzees.

Chimpanzees can live 30 years or more, at a lifetime cost of up to $300,000. The nine-member NRC panel, chaired by AIDS researcher Dani P. Bolognesi of Duke University in Durham, N.C., said euthanasia should not be used as population control. Instead, a breeding moratorium should be kept in place until at least 2001, allowing natural mortality to reduce numbers. Over the long run, the government should maintain a core research population of 1,000. Chimps no longer used in research should be cared for in public or private sanctuaries.

The similarity of chimps to humans, says the report, "implies a moral responsibility for the long-term care of chimpanzees that are used for our benefit in scientific research."