I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
After ten years of retirement at Holloman Air Force Base, more than 100 U.S. government-owned chimpanzees who were used for decades in NASA and federal medical studies, are now heading to a government lab in San Antonio, Texas, for new tests of experimental hepatitis C and hepatitis B vaccines, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.
Animal rights groups oppose the move and want Congress to enact an outright ban on federal chimpanzee research.
“These animals have been put through the wringer and they deserve to be retired,” says Kathleen Conlee, a program manager with the Humane Society of the United States.
But chimpanzees are human’s closest living relatives, sharing up to 99 percent of human genes — making them appealing as test subjects for understanding the human body’s responses to toxins and vaccines.
Housing the chimpanzees to the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio would save $2 million a year, according to U.S. National Institutes of Health officials.
The bipartisan ”Great Ape Protection Act,” currently under consideration by Congress, would retire all apes at federal labs to sanctuaries.
Gov. Bill Richardson and U.S. Sen. Tom Udall oppose moving the chimps to Texas. Richardson met with NIH officials last month to lobby for the chimps’ continued retirement in Alamogordo, according to the Los Angeles Times.
