An Examination of Chimpanzee Use in Human Cancer Research

Advocates of animal experimentation have long claimed that the genetic similarity between humans and chimpanzees makes them essential to medical research. Based on a study of prior chimpanzee research including analysis of data and and evaluation of the contributions such studies have made to human clinical progress, this study found that half of a sample of 95 papers had not been cited at all, and 35% were cited by papers that did not describe well-developed models to address human disease. In fact, fewer than 15% of chimpanzee studies had been cited by papers that were relevant to human medicine.

Furthermore, this review found that chimpanzees are rarely used in any form of cancer research and that their tumors are different than those caused by human cancers. Consequently, therapies tested on chimpanzee tumors contain so many caveats based on species differences that the conclusions may not be clinically accurate.