The NIH started phasing chimp research out in 2013 and USFWS declared them endangered (and thus off-limits for anything invasive or distressing) in 2015. Great apes can be used for observational studies (like kids), but I think even drawing blood for non-vet reasons is now pretty regulated.
Other primates, especially rhesus monkeys and, increasingly, marmosets, are important model animals for lab experiments but are less closely related to humans.
I do this stuff for a living. I know that primates are a valuable translational model, which is why I've spent the last 15 years working with them in neuroscience labs.
On the other hand, I also know that it's an ethically-tricky form of research too[+]. Public support for research depends on people understanding what we're doing and why. Conflating chimps with marmosets (which are still primates, but much less "human-like") or rhesus monkeys risks eroding that support. For example, I'm fine with genetically engineering marmosets; I would have serious misgivings about doing the same thing to generate autistic or Parkinsonian chimps.
Therefore, I think this is an important distinction and not being careful about it puts the benefits of primate work--that you're trying to champion!--at risk.
[+] For what it's worth, we do take excellent care of them.
Along with the ethical issues, the Institute of Medicine concluded that it wasn’t scientifically warranted. Data from chimps would be slightly closer to humans, but it’s also hard to get: they are dangerously strong (much more so than macaques, which are already terrifying), grow very slowly, and need tons of care and space—-and therefore money—-to thrive. Those trade offs, made starker by ethical issues, lead them to wind down chimp research. As a tech analogy, writing a browser in assembler is closer” to the hardware and could theoretically result in faster code, but in practice nobody does it because it wouldn’t be worthwhile.
Fairly little research is done in monkeys for the same reason. Mice are faster, easier, and offer more tools. This isn’t always a good thing; in fact, my last few projects have made a big deal about the value of a monkey data over rats. Nevertheless, I have zero desire to spin up an ape version.
Personal attacks will get you banned on HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. No more of this, please, and please don't post in the flamewar style to HN generally. It's not what this place is for.
Tell me one major biomedical discovery, not comparative anatomy or physiology, that we learned first or best from chimp research. I have a PhD in this and can’t think of one.
I agree that they're very genetically similar to humans. I agree that this, in some ways, would make them a good model organism. Where I disagree is that it's true we productively use(d) chimps in biomedical research for this reason. Instead, I would argue that the limited amount of biomedical research that's been done on chimps is because of the genetic similarity, which is the other way round.
If you need a realistic model of a human for (say), preclinical or toxicology studies, chimps are almost never used. Rhesus monkeys are. Dogs, sometimes, or pigs. Ferrets work pretty well for respiratory stuff. Models are sometimes picked based on genetic similarity, but functional or anatomical similarity also guide the choice. Pig hearts are a go-to model for cardiac stuff, even though a primate heart is obviously closer.
Very occasionally, people will study chimps qua chimps. This is indeed because they're close to humans, but it's not usually aimed at improving human health. Moreover, this was never particularly popular and is now incredibly rare. Primates account for like 1-2% of vertebrates used in biomedical research; chimps can't be more than a tiny fraction of that.
If you said "software is written in assembler because it's close to the machine", I think most people would agree that it could be, but also that it is, in practice, not. That's exactly how I feel about this. Chimps could be used for biomedical research--and for that reason--but in practice, they're not.
Go back and read the thread but imagine I said "We used chimps in biomedical research for decades precisely because of that overlap, why do you think it's not a helpful measure?"
Let's simplify so you have another way of looking at it:
OP: COVID shares 90% DNA with SARS so the vaccines would be similar.
OC: We share 99% DNA with chimps, so what?
Me: We use chimps in research because they are so close to us.
You: Well actually we don't anymore because of ethical concerns
For the record, I think sentient creatures should have rights and I'm glad testing on chimpanzees has ended. Have they all been released to sanctuaries yet?
It's the difference between "Yes, and we stopped ... " and "No, actually we don't". One is clarifying the second is distracting, appears to be disagreeing with facts, comes off as arrogant AND missed the point.
I give up -- inject your bleach, UV your veins, everything's a chimp, and facts don't matter.
I will cop to being short-tempered with the sheer amount of rubbish science floating around (generally and for covid-related things specifically), and for that I apologize. Wasn't shooting for arrogant so much as "you may not know that..."
It's pretty clear you don't realize this, but I don't think anybody in these threads have been arguing with your science. We also agree that experimenting on chimps is wrong.
What everybody has been doing, with various degrees of hilarity, is try to get you to see that your disagreement with my original point; we use(d) chimps in biomedical research because of their genetic similarity so using genetic similarity as a rebuttal to the SARS/COVID vaccine link makes no sense.
Facts matter and you're choosing to ignore the original fact that you disagreed with and make up some straw man fact that you can tilt at.
The reason I'm frustrated is that your comment is that it is "truthy." The general idea is true (you can learn a lot from genetically similar organisms) but the specific example is misleading.
Chimps are not--and weren't ever--a major part of biomedical research. I just looked on PubMed, which indexes pretty much all biomedical research. "Chimpanzee" returns twelve thousand articles; "monkey" returns 18.5 million.
I don't disagree that we can learn interesting things about evolution or anthropology from chimp research; I have lunch with a comparative anatomy lab all the time. At the same time, chimp research is mostly very basic science-focused. I can only think of one counter-example, which is the development of Hepatitis B vaccine. This was done in chimps and because of their close similarity to humans: other animals appear not to get Hep B. While this sort of proves your point, it's a singular exception rather than the rule.
