Bones Actress Emily Deschanel Fights to Protect Chimps

There's no Bones about it, Emily Deschanel is a friend to animals. The vegan actress is now fighting on behalf of 14 chimpanzees being used for testing by the National Institutes of Health.

Deschanel  was hopping mad when she learned that NIH transferred 14 elderly chimpanzees from their retirement facility to the Southwest National Primate Research Center to undergo more testing. These chimps have been poked and prodded all their lives, and were finally left in peace at the Alamogordo Primate Facility. Deschanel penned a letter to the NIH in protest of the move, informing NIH that the primate research center has a “long history of animal abuse.”

“All of the Alamogordo chimpanzees have already been subjected to so much pain and suffering,” Deschanel writes in her letter to NIH. “Many of them were used in painful, invasive experiments for decades before being retired in Alamogordo. All of them … deserve to live out their lives in peace.”

One of the chimps Deschanel is defending is an aging female named Rosie. Infected with hepatitis, Rosie has been anesthetized or immobilized about 100 times in order for the lab to conduct kidney biopsies on her. Rosie has suffered numerous seizures as a result of being placed under anesthesia. She was granted semi-retirement in 2000, but NIH decided to start testing on her again last year.

Deschanel isn't the only one up to bat for Rosie and her friends. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine plans file a legal petition asking the NIH to return the 14 chimps to the rehab facility.

Last year, PCRM and New Mexico governor Bill Richardson persuaded NIH to delay the transfer of 186 other chimpanzees to the Southwest Research Center until the Institute of Medicine determines if the use of animals in experiments is merited. Chimpanzees have proven to be bad models to study human diseases, and if the research doesn't benefit human health, the chimps suffer needlessly. The 14 chimps already at Southwest deserve this same consideration.

According to Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the U.S. is the only nation in the world that still uses captive chimpanzees for large-scale invasive research. About 1,000 chimpanzees are being held at research facilities nationwide, often kept in dismal conditions.

"People may be shocked to learn that laboratories in the United States are permitted to keep chimpanzees in cages about the size of a kitchen table, sometimes for decades," says PCRM primatologist Debra Durham, Ph.D. “It’s time for us to join the growing list of countries that ban invasive experiments on these amazing animals.”

Sign our petition to tell the National Institutes of Health to return these chimpanzees to the Alamogordo Primate Facility where they can be left in peace.

Photo Credit: Ravenu