[Ethical and legal aspects of animal experiments on non-human primates]

Animal experiments on non-human primates give cause for ethical concerns for three reasons (1) the inclusion of "ethical animal protection" in the German Constitution (Article 20a of the "Grundgesetz" GG, 2002) has led to real consequences for the application process with respect to the use of primates for fundamental research; (2) the legal requirements in Europe to ensure animal welfare are currently being tightened and (3) the global problem of the protection of species, especially with respect to the capturing and subsequent sale of primates is still unsolved. As a result of the way humans interpret the term justice (the principle of equality) it was to be expected that great apes, being the animals that most closely resemble humans, would play a key role in the establishment of animal protection laws. In 1997,Great Britain and Ireland made it illegal to conduct experiments on great apes. In 1999, New Zealand went even further and created a kind of basic rights for great apes. In 2003,The Netherlands forbade animal experiments using great apes as did Sweden, which also included gibbons in this ban (which is in line with current taxonomy, which considers gibbons to belong to the family Hominidae). In 2006 Austria forbade experiments carried out on chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orang-utans, and gibbons. Only recently, a state commission on ethics in Switzerland demanded that the Swiss government do the same. And the summer of 2006 saw a debate in Spain on the inclusion of the protection of great apes in the primary goals of the state. Due to the principle of equality, a further extension (both geographically and systemically) of the exclusion of great apes from animal experiments is to be expected. Since Article 20a GG on "ethical animal protection" came into effect on August 1,2002, the regulatory authorities in Germany have the right to independently check and control animal experiments as to their ethical tenability (Administrative Court Giessen, confirmed by the Administrative Court of the State of Hessia) i.e. an authorization for experiments in the area of fundamental research may only be given by the authorities if the "ethical tenability" (according to Section 7 paragraph 3 of the German Law on Animal Welfare) is given. The "ethical tenability" of fundamental research experiments follows other rules than those that pertain to applied research. Fundamental research is granted a low to mid-level tolerance of pain and suffering as being ethically tenable; not tenable are stronger or very high doses of pain and suffering. Actually in summer 2006, a proposal for fundamental research using mon-