Comment on Amy Pepe's Article

Grace Devlin
AP Biology – Article Comment
12/19/11


This week, I read Amy Pepe’s review of “Use of Chimps Halted in New U.S. Funded Research.” Amy did a great job on her review, summarizing it and providing all the important details very clearly. One aspect of Amy’s article that was particularly commendable was her use of a quotation from Francis S. Collins of the National Institutes of Health. I also liked how Amy explained the implications of the suspension of research done on chimpanzees and how it has begun to cease anyway because of the high costs. Finally, I also liked how Amy included the one exception to this new declaration, which allows testing in the event of necessary research that could not be done without the use of chimpanzees. This tells us that there was probably some fight against the legislation that passed this new mandate because it will hinder progression on some scientific fronts.

In relation to this last point, it would have benefitted her review if Amy had included any information on opposition to this movement. This way, her report would cover all the bases and give the reader all sides of the story. Also, Amy failed to include any data as to what kind of testing was being done on the chimpanzees that will no longer occur. Whether this is was in the article or not, I don’t know, but, nonetheless, it would have been nice to include for the reader’s sake.

Overall, I found Amy’s review to be interesting because it addresses a very prevalent topic in our society: animal rights. Nowadays, we hear more and more about the ceasing of testing on animals because it is cruel and inhumane. The case of the chimpanzees falls right under this umbrella and it is good to know that people are starting to respect their right to live.