So far the NIH has not budged on their plans to transfer 202 chimpanzees from the Alamogordo Primate Facility to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research.

The chimpanzees have gotten some celebrity support recently, though – Gene Hackman wrote a letter to the head of NIH asking to halt this transfer.  Check out this excerpt from his letter (it gave me chills in a good way):

“As you know, efforts to save the Alamogordo chimpanzee have drawn support from Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Tom Udall, and many other people around the state and across the country. I join them in urging you to fulfill the National Institutes of Health’s goal to ‘exemplify and promote the highest level of scientific integrity, public accountability, and social responsibility in the conduct of science’ by allowing these chimpanzees to live out their lives in the safety of a sanctuary.”

Read the full letter here: http://pcrm.org/resch/alamogordo/hackman.html

If you haven’t already, please contact the government about this issue. Your tax money is funding the laboratory housing and future experimentation on these chimpanzees.

Find out more ways you can help by following this blog for updates, as well as:

Project R&R

Animal Protection of New Mexico

Humane Society of the United States

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine