"Chimpanzees have been our research subjects, astronauts, zoo attractions and TV stars. Can we repay them by easing them into their sunset years? Travels among primate retirees. By Chareles Siebert"

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/magazine/

Site requires registration (it's free).

This is an great article, published in today's (July 24) NYTimes Magazine. It takes an in-depth look at chimps retired from biomedical research labs, the entertainment industry, etc, now being placed in sanctuaries. Amazing photos of chimps in their new homes, plus a large photo showing what the inside of Coulston looked like. Very positive coverage. Well worth reading.

Registering to read one article is annoying.
Username: tosser45
Password: tosser

Registering to read one article is annoying.
Username: tosser45
Password: tosser

So is your comment. The article - published in a major newspaper with a large readership - is well worth five or ten seconds regristration time. But if you don't want to -don't; nobody's making it a requirement.

ETA: Oops. I get it now. Apologies.

The article was really interesting. Another really excellent read along the same lines is Silent Partners by Eugene Linden. It tells the story of some of the chimps and other apes that were taught sign language and what happened to them after the research was over. Kind of a sad story.

BTW, if you're lazy, here's a link straight the Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/magazine/24CHIMPS.html

It's worth it to register, IMO. I'm always reading articles from that site, and it remembers your ID if you choose to set that up.

I also have some commentary on it here: http://tinyurl.com/a2vhw

I also have some commentary on it here: http://tinyurl.com/a2vhw

Wow nice blog (content & design); I'm impressed. I'd been meaning to find out if any animal rights blogs were out there . . . now I know.

ETA: And now I've listened to a "podcast" (on the George F. Will: What We Owe What We Eat article). Nice. I don't do blogs, so I don't know how common the podcast feature is, but I always get a kick out of hearing people's actual voices (a la the Animal Voices radio show), as it helps me feel more connected. Hope you continue to develop that aspect of the site.

I just looked at Eugene Linden's book on Amazon... here's a review...

Linden's report is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. It reveals how some of the superstars of the ape language experiments of the '70s, as well as several lesser-known primate research subjects, were callously discarded after the funding (and subsequently interest) dried up. With a few happy exceptions, their lives are now miserable -- or over.
It's as bad as the chimps from the space program, who after years of careful training were sold to laboratories for medical experiments. Most of Linden's subjects -- after being reared in human company and taught to use sign language or symbol-boards -- were sold to laboratories, placed in zoos, or attempted to return to the wild (with disasterous results).

The image of a despondent gorilla in a dank concrete zoo cage, signing desperately to passers-by "get me out, get me out!" will haunt me forever.

Even when the animals we use and abuse *can* speak our language, people refuse to listen :(

"The image of a despondent gorilla in a dank concrete zoo cage, signing desperately to passers-by "get me out, get me out!" will haunt me forever."

That just floored me, absolutely tears my heart out, how extremely and truly sad, ugh, why, why, why do people do this to our brethren. It's stuff like this that makes me feel so comfortable with the idea of people torching labs, etc.

Irizary, which book by Linden is that review from anyway?

Wow nice blog (content & design); I'm impressed. I'd been meaning to find out if any animal rights blogs were out there . . . now I know.

ETA: And now I've listened to a "podcast" (on the George F. Will: What We Owe What We Eat article). Nice. I don't do blogs, so I don't know how common the podcast feature is, but I always get a kick out of hearing people's actual voices (a la the Animal Voices radio show), as it helps me feel more connected. Hope you continue to develop that aspect of the site.

Thanks. I hope to. There was a recent Macworld newsletter with some tips about streamlining the podcasting process. Hopefully I'll get a chance to look at that soon so I can be more consistent about podcasting about once a week.

In the meantime, I'm pretty active with the actual blog, so subscribe or just keep coming back. There's a blogroll to the left in the Links section, too. Some cool vegan blogs listed there.

Hi jbphburg,

it's the one Oriole mentions above, "Silent Partners" by Eugene Linden.

This is from "Library Journal" -
Among the celebrities of the 1970s were a group of chimpanzees who learned sign language. Linden, author of Apes, Men, and Language, (Penguin, 1981) has followed the declining fortunes of Nim, Lucy, Washoe, et al. since the abandonment of the original language studies. Once our language-using "brethren," the chimps are now a growing surplus, a nuisance occasionally arousing guilt. Personality clashes and consequent funding cuts have caused a dispersal of the chimpsto laboratories, to zoo-like facilities, and even to Africa for an improbable "rehabilitation." Linden censures key participants in the original studies and raises serious moral questions about our ambiguous and fickle relationship with these primates, some of whom are being used in AIDS studies...

I agree with you, it's disgusting how these animals have been used. The NASA/Air Force chimpanzees and monkeys too have been treated unbelievably shamefully (in stark contrast to the human "heroes" who chose to go into space) - the animals got sent into space, then for the most part were thrown into research labs and such when they got back. See this... http://www.vivisectioninfo.org/vivcampaigns/news_afchimps_apnews.html

I'm so thin skinned about the animal abuse issues, I haven't really 'toughened up' in regards to them in ten years of being aware, it makes me extremely angry and sad that anyone ever anywhere does such things to any of them. And chimps are so social and family oriented, denying them that is so brutally cold and evil, Ugh, just gives me a headache picturing a chimp alone is a cage, nothing to do, no contact, nothing, that's the traditional way they're kept in research labs, although in recent times some have acquiesced to allowing some time outside with thier brethren, a distant cry from the life intended by nature.