I know I have been crying a lot lately

I watched something last night that was the saddest thing I have ever seen. There is a show on PBS called Nature. It is my favorite show I watch it all the time. Normally this is not a sad show. Unfortunately the one I decided to watch last night was. It is called Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History. I cried for an hour. The show is an hour long.

Chimpanzees are considered an endangered animal, in other countries. It should be considered endangered in ours simply because of the things we do to them. These things really upset me. The Biomedical Community has no heart. There are approximately 1100 chimpanzees being tested on as we speak. We don't even know for sure how many we have in the United States. The film maker went to a couple of rescues. One rescue in particular is called Coulston Lab. This was a huge government paid laboratory. It looked like a place where you keep dogs. I love dogs. I wouldn't keep my dogs in a place like that. Not to mention an animal with an exponentially higher mental capacity. There were 266 chimps in say a 3' by 5' windowless cage. This laboratory was in operation until 2002. Save the Chimps bought Coulston when the government finally shut it down after years and years of animal rights violations. They put doors in between all of the cages so that the chimps interact while they build islands in Florida. The islands are made so that the chimps can have safe place to stay outside instead of a cage. Some of the chimps have no teeth, because they were all removed. Most of them will die prematurely because of the inhumane tests that were done on them. One chimp started developing heart problems and they took him and his best chimp friend to live on the island immediately. They didn't want him to die in a cage. Unfortunately, when you have been in a 3x5 cage for 30 years grass can be a little scary. When they moved him they leave them in his cage overnight to get adjusted then the next morning they open the door. From then on they are free to do as they please. He wouldn't leave the small sidewalk right outside his window. The day after that they let his friend out onto the island. She walked out and didn't come back in the cage. They said that no one could get her to come back in and she spent the night under the stars.

At another rescue facility Fauna Foundation they too built these islands to keep the chimps in instead of cages. It was incredibly hard for them because eight of the fifteen chimps that she rescued from a research facility have HIV. In the 80's when they found AIDS they breed tons of chimps and injected them with HIV just to find out that under normal conditions HIV in chimps will not develop into AIDS. It took the foundation five years to get the permits to build the island on their land in Canada. It was just in time. One of their most emotionally unstable chimps was able to go outside. At the end of the movie you find out that he dies about two weeks after the movie was finished. He was 37 about 10 years shy of a normal life span. They explained that when they get the chimps they don't know much about them. They know approximately how old they are from there medical records at the lab. But the lab keeps almost no record of how they got them or their life before the lab. They usually know if they were in the circus or the movies and that is about it. The lab did keep records of everything they did to the animals. This same chimp Billy Joe chewed off three of his fingers in reaction to anesthesia. He spent most of his days locked in his room of his own doing, because he has no social skills. He can't spend time with other chimps because he doesn't know how. Another chimp that was taken out of her cage and let go on the same island was pretty moving. She left the door in a hurry and ran straight to a tree and climbed all the way to the top, after 30 years in a cage. There are somethings that they just can't beat out of you.

The sad part is is that they aren't stopping research on chimps. Worse than that you and I are paying for it. There are a few labs in operation still. The film maker asked to go and film the conditions. Even though this is paid for by tax payers they didn't allow it. They said that there are three chimp deaths of negligence that are being investigated right now. This kind of stuff makes me want to leave the country in a hurry. That way they can't do whatever they please with my money anymore. My money won't go to war and it won't go to animal testing. Why is it that people think that if you can talk you are smarter? That you are somehow better than an animal cause they can't talk. Maybe they are just easier to abuse because they can't say, "Stop".