WASHINGTON ? On a political high, President Barack Obama capped a bruising year by securing a tax cut for millions of Americans ? an achievement that overshadowed Washington's deepening dysfunction and the slow progress of the economy on his watch.
The White House has ended a year with a political victory before. This time around the stakes are higher, and the president is by no means assured of carrying the momentum deep into an election year.
Addressing reporters before heading to Hawaii on Friday, Obama looked like a president in command of the stage again, for now. He left the capital after presiding over a two-month extension of a payroll tax cut ? about $40 per paycheck for someone making $50,000 a year ? that came when House Republicans caved on demands for a longer deal.
Yet on this issue, like many, enormous work remains for Obama after the new year, just when voters begin choosing a Republican nominee to try to oust him from his job.
Obama initially had pushed for a year-long extension of both the Social Security payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits. He got only two months on both because Congress could not agree on how to pay the bill for more without gutting their own political priorities ? the same problem that awaits all sides in the weeks to come.
Although Obama calls a full-year extension a "formality," politically, it is not. So he pushed Congress to work "without drama, without delay" when they return from their own recess.
The whole scene was reminiscent of a year ago, when Obama took a self-described "shellacking" in the midterm elections but still ended up leaving for his yearly Hawaiian holiday on a high note.
In a news conference at the time, a jubilant Obama claimed a "season of progress" after stringing together legislative victories in a lame-duck congressional session, including the repeal of the military's ban on openly gay service members and approval of a new nuclear treaty with Russia.
But progress was short-lived. Obama returned to Washington in January to face a divided Congress and a Republican party prepared to push him to the brink.
This time, Obama left without taking questions from reporters, ensuring no disruption from the narrative all over Washington ? a win for him, a capitulation for House Republicans. Had he engaged the press, Obama may well have been challenged about violence in Iraq since a U.S. troop withdrawal, or his own flip-flop over an oil pipeline included in the tax deal.
Obama may have won the messaging war this December, preventing higher taxes for 160 million Americans. But he gave up plenty to get a deal.
In securing the short-term extension, Obama caved on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. The president had boldly said he would reject any effort to tie the payroll tax extension to the proposed Canada-to-Texas pipeline; he later gave in to GOP demands to make a decision on the project within 60 days.
Given that the House Republicans' backpedaling far overshadowed the president's compromises, GOP consultant John Feehery said Republican lawmakers are likely to come back to Washington in January even more motivated to take on the president.
"This is a temporary victory," Feehery said. "We're going to go back to the fight once again in a month and a half. This is one battle, not the whole war."
Obama's willingness to stand firm could help rally support among Democrats who have complained that the president too often seems to give in too much.
Obama's hard line at the end of the payroll tax cut talks sent an important message both to his supporters and Republicans, Democratic strategist Karen Finney said. She said both have misinterpreted Obama's prior compromises as a sign of weakness.
"In this instance it was certainly critical that the president not give any more ground," Finney said. "He showed that he does have a point at which he won't go farther."
The economy has been showing signs of coming around, too, which is vital to Obama's chances for a second term. But this is another area in which today's optimism can turn troubling at any time, with outside forces such as Europe's economic woes threatening to dampen the American recovery.
Each year, partisan debate and unfinished business have forced the president to delay departure for his cherished Christmas vacation in Hawaii. This December's stalemate threatened to derail the trip entirely, given that Obama himself pledged to stay in Washington until a deal to extend the cuts was reached.
Obama's original Dec. 17 departure date came and went.
It was only Friday, after the House and Senate finalized the deal, that the White House announced Obama's departure for later in the day.
The president has no public events planned during what is expected to be about a 10-day vacation. He typically spends his days in Hawaii playing golf or going to the beach with his family, though he makes occasional outings for dinner with friends.
The White House says the president's focus will be on spending time with his family. But there will be a small team of advisers traveling with Obama to brief him daily on domestic and international events ? and to help him get ready for the work, and the battles, that wait in January.
Skeletons point to Columbus voyage for syphilis originsPublic release date: 20-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Beverly Clark beverly.clark@emory.com 404-712-8780 Emory University
More evidence emerges to support that the progenitor of syphilis came from the New World
Skeletons don't lie. But sometimes they may mislead, as in the case of bones that reputedly showed evidence of syphilis in Europe and other parts of the Old World before Christopher Columbus made his historic voyage in 1492.
None of this skeletal evidence, including 54 published reports, holds up when subjected to standardized analyses for both diagnosis and dating, according to an appraisal in the current Yearbook of Physical Anthropology. In fact, the skeletal data bolsters the case that syphilis did not exist in Europe before Columbus set sail.
"This is the first time that all 54 of these cases have been evaluated systematically," says George Armelagos, an anthropologist at Emory University and co-author of the appraisal. "The evidence keeps accumulating that a progenitor of syphilis came from the New World with Columbus' crew and rapidly evolved into the venereal disease that remains with us today."
The appraisal was led by two of Armelagos' former graduate students at Emory: Molly Zuckerman, who is now an assistant professor at Mississippi State University, and Kristin Harper, currently a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University. Additional authors include Emory anthropologist John Kingston and Megan Harper from the University of Missouri.
"Syphilis has been around for 500 years," Zuckerman says. "People started debating where it came from shortly afterwards, and they haven't stopped since. It was one of the first global diseases, and understanding where it came from and how it spread may help us combat diseases today."
'The natural selection of a disease'
The treponemal family of bacteria causes syphilis and related diseases that share some symptoms but spread differently. Syphilis is sexually transmitted. Yaws and bejel, which occurred in early New World populations, are tropical diseases that are transmitted through skin-to-skin contact or oral contact.
The first recorded epidemic of venereal syphilis occurred in Europe in 1495. One hypothesis is that a subspecies of Treponema from the warm, moist climate of the tropical New World mutated into the venereal subspecies to survive in the cooler and relatively more hygienic European environment.
The fact that syphilis is a stigmatized, sexual disease has added to the controversy over its origins, Zuckerman says.
"In reality, it appears that venereal syphilis was the by-product of two different populations meeting and exchanging a pathogen," she says. "It was an adaptive event, the natural selection of a disease, independent of morality or blame."
An early doubter
Armelagos, a pioneer of the field of bioarcheology, was one of the doubters decades ago, when he first heard the Columbus theory for syphilis. "I laughed at the idea that a small group of sailors brought back this disease that caused this major European epidemic," he recalls.
While teaching at the University of Massachusetts, he and graduate student Brenda Baker decided to investigate the matter and got a shock: All of the available evidence at the time actually supported the Columbus theory. "It was a paradigm shift," Armelagos says. The pair published their results in 1988.
In 2008, Harper and Armelagos published the most comprehensive comparative genetic analysis ever conducted on syphilis's family of bacteria. The results again supported the hypothesis that syphilis, or some progenitor, came from the New World.
A second, closer look
But reports of pre-Columbian skeletons showing the lesions of chronic syphilis have kept cropping up in the Old World. For this latest appraisal of the skeletal evidence, the researchers gathered all of the published reports.
They found that most of the skeletal material did not meet at least one of the standardized, diagnostic criteria for chronic syphilis, including pitting on the skull known as caries sicca and pitting and swelling of the long bones.
The few published cases that did meet the criteria tended to come from coastal regions where seafood was a big part of the diet. The so-called "marine reservoir effect," caused by eating seafood which contains "old carbon" from upwelling, deep ocean waters, can throw off radiocarbon dating of a skeleton by hundreds, or even thousands, of years. Analyzing the collagen levels of the skeletal material enabled the researchers to estimate the seafood consumption and factor that result into the radiocarbon dating.
"Once we adjusted for the marine signature, all of the skeletons that showed definite signs of treponemal disease appeared to be dated to after Columbus returned to Europe," Harper says.
"The origin of syphilis is a fascinating, compelling question," Zuckerman says. "The current evidence is pretty definitive, but we shouldn't close the book and say we're done with the subject. The great thing about science is constantly being able to understand things in a new light."
###
Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate experience, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. Emory encompasses nine academic divisions as well as the Carlos Museum, The Carter Center, the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, Georgia's largest and most comprehensive health care system.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Skeletons point to Columbus voyage for syphilis originsPublic release date: 20-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Beverly Clark beverly.clark@emory.com 404-712-8780 Emory University
More evidence emerges to support that the progenitor of syphilis came from the New World
Skeletons don't lie. But sometimes they may mislead, as in the case of bones that reputedly showed evidence of syphilis in Europe and other parts of the Old World before Christopher Columbus made his historic voyage in 1492.
None of this skeletal evidence, including 54 published reports, holds up when subjected to standardized analyses for both diagnosis and dating, according to an appraisal in the current Yearbook of Physical Anthropology. In fact, the skeletal data bolsters the case that syphilis did not exist in Europe before Columbus set sail.
"This is the first time that all 54 of these cases have been evaluated systematically," says George Armelagos, an anthropologist at Emory University and co-author of the appraisal. "The evidence keeps accumulating that a progenitor of syphilis came from the New World with Columbus' crew and rapidly evolved into the venereal disease that remains with us today."
The appraisal was led by two of Armelagos' former graduate students at Emory: Molly Zuckerman, who is now an assistant professor at Mississippi State University, and Kristin Harper, currently a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University. Additional authors include Emory anthropologist John Kingston and Megan Harper from the University of Missouri.
"Syphilis has been around for 500 years," Zuckerman says. "People started debating where it came from shortly afterwards, and they haven't stopped since. It was one of the first global diseases, and understanding where it came from and how it spread may help us combat diseases today."
'The natural selection of a disease'
The treponemal family of bacteria causes syphilis and related diseases that share some symptoms but spread differently. Syphilis is sexually transmitted. Yaws and bejel, which occurred in early New World populations, are tropical diseases that are transmitted through skin-to-skin contact or oral contact.
The first recorded epidemic of venereal syphilis occurred in Europe in 1495. One hypothesis is that a subspecies of Treponema from the warm, moist climate of the tropical New World mutated into the venereal subspecies to survive in the cooler and relatively more hygienic European environment.
The fact that syphilis is a stigmatized, sexual disease has added to the controversy over its origins, Zuckerman says.
"In reality, it appears that venereal syphilis was the by-product of two different populations meeting and exchanging a pathogen," she says. "It was an adaptive event, the natural selection of a disease, independent of morality or blame."
An early doubter
Armelagos, a pioneer of the field of bioarcheology, was one of the doubters decades ago, when he first heard the Columbus theory for syphilis. "I laughed at the idea that a small group of sailors brought back this disease that caused this major European epidemic," he recalls.
While teaching at the University of Massachusetts, he and graduate student Brenda Baker decided to investigate the matter and got a shock: All of the available evidence at the time actually supported the Columbus theory. "It was a paradigm shift," Armelagos says. The pair published their results in 1988.
In 2008, Harper and Armelagos published the most comprehensive comparative genetic analysis ever conducted on syphilis's family of bacteria. The results again supported the hypothesis that syphilis, or some progenitor, came from the New World.
A second, closer look
But reports of pre-Columbian skeletons showing the lesions of chronic syphilis have kept cropping up in the Old World. For this latest appraisal of the skeletal evidence, the researchers gathered all of the published reports.
They found that most of the skeletal material did not meet at least one of the standardized, diagnostic criteria for chronic syphilis, including pitting on the skull known as caries sicca and pitting and swelling of the long bones.
The few published cases that did meet the criteria tended to come from coastal regions where seafood was a big part of the diet. The so-called "marine reservoir effect," caused by eating seafood which contains "old carbon" from upwelling, deep ocean waters, can throw off radiocarbon dating of a skeleton by hundreds, or even thousands, of years. Analyzing the collagen levels of the skeletal material enabled the researchers to estimate the seafood consumption and factor that result into the radiocarbon dating.
"Once we adjusted for the marine signature, all of the skeletons that showed definite signs of treponemal disease appeared to be dated to after Columbus returned to Europe," Harper says.
"The origin of syphilis is a fascinating, compelling question," Zuckerman says. "The current evidence is pretty definitive, but we shouldn't close the book and say we're done with the subject. The great thing about science is constantly being able to understand things in a new light."
###
Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate experience, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. Emory encompasses nine academic divisions as well as the Carlos Museum, The Carter Center, the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, Georgia's largest and most comprehensive health care system.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
WASHINGTON ? The endgame at hand, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders expressed optimism Thursday at prospects for swift compromise to extend Social Security tax cuts, keep long-term jobless benefits flowing and avoid a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday.
A third year-end bill, setting new rules for the handling of terror suspects in U.S. custody, was cleared for final passage.
"Right now, Congress needs to make sure that 160 million working Americans don't see their taxes go up on Jan. 1," said President Barack Obama, referring to the tax cut extension at the core of the jobs program he outlined in a nationally televised speech three months ago.
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, the most powerful Republican in an era of divided government, agreed. "We can extend payroll tax relief for American workers, help create new jobs and keep the government running. And frankly, we can do it in a bipartisan way," he said.
The long-moribund job market, too, appeared to be on the mend. Government figures showed 366,000 applications for unemployment benefits were filed last week, the lowest number since the near-collapse of the financial system in 2008 and the brutal recession that followed.
In the Capitol, the previous day's bristling rhetoric and partisan jabs all but vanished.
Republicans agreed to consider changes to a $1 trillion spending bill compromise that they and at least one Democrat said had been wrapped up days ago. The White House said it wanted adjustments.
There were separate negotiations on legislation to extend the Social Security payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits. Democrats abandoned their demand for a surtax on million-dollar incomes that they wanted to include in the measure, removing a provision that Republicans strongly opposed.
"We hope that we can come up with something that would get us out of here at a reasonable time in the next few days," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
At a news conference, Boehner minimized the concession, noting that Democrats lacked the votes to impose the surtax a year ago when they commanded 60 votes in the Senate. Even so, he said, "there was some movement yesterday from the White House and Democrat leaders" toward a compromise.
Boehner also left open the possibility of a compromise on another key sticking point ? a House-passed provision that all but requires construction of the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to Texas.
Construction "will put 20,000 people to work immediately And there are about 115,000 other jobs directly related to it," he said. Yet he skipped an opportunity to say construction of the project was a non-negotiable condition as talks on the payroll tax cut bill proceed.
Obama has threatened to veto the House-passed bill, in part citing the requirement for the pipeline. The project has been studied for more than three years, but the president recently announced he would put off a decision until after the 2012 elections.
Without an extension of the payroll tax cut, 160 million Americans will have smaller take home pay beginning on Jan. 1, a fact that the president and leaders of both parties stressed as they looked for compromise.
Obama asked Congress to extend and also to expand the payroll tax cut that took effect last Jan. 1 and is due to expire at the end of the year. The House-passed bill renews the current reduction for one year, and it was unclear whether a final compromise would go any further.
The president also wants to leave in place a system that provides aid for up to 99 weeks for the long-term unemployed. The House-passed measure reduces the total by 20 weeks, a step that the administration says would cut off 3.3 million individuals and that Democrats are hoping to soften if not reverse.
Also part of the negotiations was an attempt to head off a threatened 27 percent cut in payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients, an item added in the House to appeal to conservatives unhappy at extending the payroll tax cuts.
Reid indicated that a number of expiring tax breaks were on the table, as well, a list that included a provision that benefits commuters who use mass transit.
In a bow to deficit-conscious conservatives in the House, Obama and leaders in both parties have agreed to offset the cost of the measure to avoid raising deficits.
The White House and Democrats wanted to use the surtax on million-dollar income to finance most of the bill. But with that off the table, they were required to look elsewhere in talks with Republicans.
The House-passed measure relied on a pay freeze and increased pension contributions for federal workers, as well as higher Medicare premiums for seniors with incomes over $80,000, beginning in 2017. The bill would also would raise a fee that is charged to banks whose mortgages are guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and cancel more than $40 billion from the year-old health care bill that is Obama's signature domestic achievement.
At about $1 trillion, the year-end spending measure would lock in cuts that Republicans extracted from Democrats in negotiations conducted months ago against the deadline of a previous government shutdown threat.
This time, the two sides reached an agreement days ago, according to Republicans and at least one Democrat, well ahead of the Friday midnight deadline. Somewhat belatedly, the White House and Reid insisted otherwise, and Republicans accused them of reneging on the deal to gain leverage in negotiations on the payroll tax bill.
In response to the Democrats, House Republicans threatened on Wednesday to repackage the measure and pass it. The leadership held the threat in abeyance while compromise negotiations took place.
The separate defense bill covered military personnel, weapons systems, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and more at a cost of $662 billion, $27 billion below Obama's request.
The main controversy revolved around a provision to require military custody for foreign terrorist suspects linked to al-Qaida or its affiliates and involved in plotting or attacking the United States. Under a change made to gain Obama's backing, the legislation would permit the FBI to arrest and interrogate foreign terror suspects, as is now the case.
___
Associated Press writers Donna Cassata and Andrew Taylor contributed to this story.
CAIRO (Reuters) ? Demonstrators armed with stones and petrol bombs clashed with troops wielding truncheons and electric prods in Cairo on Friday, witnesses said, in the worst violence since the start of Egypt's first free election in six decades.
Military police tried to break up a sit-in by pro-democracy activists overnight and anger at their rough tactics erupted into clashes that quickly turned the streets around parliament into a rock-strewn battle zone.
In a pattern of spreading violence that has become a familiar refrain during nine months of army rule since President Hosni Mubarak's overthrow, protesters regrouped in growing numbers as resentment at security forces' tactics grew.
By early afternoon, troops were trying to disperse around 10,000 protesters with truncheons and what witnesses said appeared to be cattle prods that they used to give electric shocks to some of the demonstrators.
Ambulance sirens wailed, reports of beatings of well-known democracy activists buzzed across social media and politicians from Islamists to liberals lined up to condemn the army's heavy-handed tactics.
"Even if the sit-in was not legal, should it be dispersed with such brutality and barbarity?" presidential candidate and former U.N. nuclear watchdog director Mohamed ElBaradei said on Facebook.
A health ministry official said 99 people had been injured in the clashes and five had gunshot wounds.
The sit-in outside the cabinet office was a remnant of far bigger protests last month in Cairo's Tahrir Square and nearby streets that left dozens dead and overshadowed the build-up to the first parliamentary vote since Mubarak's fall in February.
In Friday's disturbances, cars were set alight and part of a state building was torched.
Troops and unidentified men in plainclothes hurled rocks from the roof of one parliament building on protesters who threw stones, shards of glass and petrol bombs.
Demonstrators piled car tires and plastic materials in the street and set them alight to send up plumes of black smoke and block the view of the street from above.
The head of the ruling military council, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, ordered that everyone injured in the fighting be treated in army hospitals, state television said.
An army source told Reuters that 32 security personnel who were guarding the parliament were also injured trying to stop protesters breaking into the building.
Ziad el-Elaimy, a leading figure in the liberal Egyptian Bloc who ran for parliament in Cairo, said he was beaten by security forces when he arrived to witness the scene.
When he protested, army officers told him: "To hell with you and your parliament," according to Elaimy.
BATTLEGROUND
The six-week vote for the lower house of parliament has been mostly peaceful since it began on November 28. A big first-round turnout took some of the steam out of street protests aimed at pressuring the military to hand power immediately to civilians.
Those protests descended into days of clashes near Tahrir Square, prompting the army-backed government to resign and the ruling generals to pledge to step aside by the end of June 2012.
A new cabinet is due on Sunday to hold a first full meeting since it was sworn in on December 7 and plans to weigh new austerity measures to address a wider-than-expected budget deficit.
Protesters have occupied an area outside the cabinet office since late November, forcing the government to meet elsewhere. They said they were provoked into violence by the army, which was looking for an excuse to move in and break up the sit-in.
They said fighting flared after images were posted online of an activist who took part in the sit-in - named as Abboudi Ibrahim - being supported by a crowd, his face badly bruised and eyes swollen and shut after he was detained by military police.
Protester Bebars Mohamed, 19, said he was at the sit-in when military police grabbed Ibrahim.
"The army pushed us away from Parliament Street and burnt the tents. They threw rocks and glass on us," he said.
ARMY STILL IN CHARGE
Turnout appeared relatively high again in the second round of the parliamentary vote on Wednesday and Thursday, which took place in parts of greater Cairo, Ismailiya and Suez in the east, Aswan to the south and Nile Delta regions in the north.
The leading group, the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), said it expected to hold on to its lead but that it was not clear whether its share of the vote would stay around the 40 percent mark.
Early indications suggested the FJP was maintaining its lead, followed again by the hardline Islamist Salafi Al-Nour party and the liberal Egyptian Bloc in third place, state newspapers reported on Friday.
The army, which took over after Mubarak was ousted, is in charge until a presidential election in mid-2012, but parliament will have a popular mandate that the ruling military council will find difficult to ignore as it oversees the transition.
"The council wants to spoil the elections. They don't want a parliament that has popular legitimacy unlike them and would challenge their authority," said Shadi Fawzy, a pro-democracy activist. "I don't believe they will hand over power in June."
Egypt's official news agency said a new civilian advisory council that was set up to offer guidance to the army generals on policy would meet later on Friday to discuss the clashes.
But two members of the council, whose creation was seen as a concession to campaigners demanding an end to army rule, resigned because of the violence and said they would not attend.
Political experts said Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri, who has made law and order a top priority for his new interim government, appeared unsure of how to act.
"The prime minister said he now had presidential powers, but he hasn't moved or spoken or issued clear directions," Adel Soliman, head of the International Centre for Future and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "There is complete silence from all those in power."
(Additional reporting by Marwa Awad, Omar Fahmy, Shaimaa Fayed, Ashraf Fahim, Amr Dalsh; Writing by Tom Pfeiffer; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
New research from Nielsen shows that the smartphone is continuing to make big leaps in popularity in the U.S., now accounting for some 44 percent of all cellular phones being used in the country.
Apple?s iPhone leads the pack in the U.S. among smartphone manufacturers, accounting for 28.6 percent of the entire market in the country. It?s not the top platform in the country, though ? that still goes to Google?s Android platform, which holds down 44 percent of the total smartphone market.
MSNBC?s Technolog has the story, which notes Nielsen gathered its data from 25,000 U.S. cellular customers and that the smartphone market in 2009 accounted for just 18 percent of all cellular phones in the U.S. Among manufacturers, Apple is the leader, but the next biggest share of the market goes to BlackBerry maker Research In Motion with 17 percent. Next is Android device maker HTC with 15.8 percent, then the world leader in smartphones by revenue, Samsung, with 10.4 percent. The Windows Mobile platform came in fourth, accounting for 5.3 percent of all smartphones.
Among the 44 percent of people that own smartphones, more than half of them are between the ages of 18 and 34. Sixty-four percent of 25- to 34-year-olds are smartphone owners, while 53 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds own smartphones. On average, iOS users have 44 apps on their devices.
Facebook is the most-used app on both iOS and Android, Nielsen reported (which we already knew), and just under half ? 49 percent ? say they ?frequently? use their smartphones while they?re shopping. In fact, using smartphones to save money is something that a lot of owners do. Nielsen also found that 87 percent of app users ? those who have downloaded an app in the last 30 days ? used them to access a ?deal-of-the-day? website, such as LivingSocial or Groupon.
We?ve heard that Apple?s devices are growing in popularity and that demand in 2012 for the devices may be even higher than was previously expected. Sounds like we might be seeing Apple?s share of the smartphone market increasing as that market continues to grow. Of course, we?ll have to wait and see what Google and Android have to offer, but things seem to be going well for Apple.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Chimpanzees should hardly ever be used for medical research, a prestigious scientific group told the government Thursday ? advice that means days in the laboratory may be numbered for humans' closest relatives.
The Institute of Medicine stopped short of recommending the outright ban that animal rights activists had pushed. Instead, it urged strict limits that would make invasive experiments with chimps essentially a last resort, saying today's more advanced research tools mean the primates' use only rarely will be necessary enough to outweigh the moral costs.
Chimp research already was dwindling fast as scientists turned to less costly and ethically charged alternatives. The government agency in charge of it ? the National Institutes of Health ? called the new recommendations "scientifically well-founded" and signaled that it would make some changes.
"While operational details will need to be worked out, NIH intends to adopt the panel's general conclusions," said Dr. Francis Collins, the NIH's director.
These apes' genetic similarity to people has long caused a quandary. It's what has made them so valuable to scientists for nearly a century. They were vital in creating a vaccine for hepatitis B, for example, and even were shot into space to make sure the trip wouldn't kill the astronauts next in line.
But that close relationship also has had animal rights groups arguing that using chimps for biomedical research is unethical, even cruel.
"We understand and feel compelled by the moral cost of using chimpanzees in research," said bioethicist Jeffrey Kahn of Johns Hopkins University, who chaired the Institute of Medicine panel. "We have established criteria that will set the bar quite high for justification of the use of chimpanzees."
For biomedical research ? testing new drugs or giving the animal a disease ? that means using chimps only if studies cannot be done on other animals or people themselves, and if foregoing the chimp studies would hinder progress against life-threatening or other debilitating diseases.
The panel advised the government to limit use of chimps in behavioral research as well, saying such studies must provide insights into the brain and behavior that otherwise are unattainable ? and use techniques that minimize any pain or distress.
The U.S. is one of only two countries known to still conduct medical research with chimpanzees; the other is Gabon, in Africa. The European Union essentially banned such research last year.
Here, too, the practice is dwindling fast. The Institute of Medicine's investigation found over the past 10 years, the NIH has paid for just 110 projects of any type that involved chimps. There are not quite 1,000 chimps available for medical research in the country. While it's impossible to say how many have been used in privately funded pharmaceutical research, the industry is shifting to higher-tech and less costly research methods. One drug company, GlaxoSmithKline, adopted an official policy ending its use of great apes, including chimpanzees, in research.
Thursday's report was triggered by an uproar over the fate of 186 semi-retired research chimps that the NIH, to save money, last year planned to move from a New Mexico facility to an active research lab in Texas.
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Public release date: 20-Dec-2011
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New research from Nielsen shows that the smartphone is continuing to make big leaps in popularity in the U.S., now accounting for some 44 percent of all cellular phones being used in the country.
