Testing vaccines on captive chimps to protect wild chimps — Is it worth it?

In February 2011, a team of scientists led by Peter Walsh at the University of Cambridge injected six captive chimpanzees with an experimental vaccine against the deadly Ebola virus. “Protecting endangered chimpanzees and gorillas against Ebola is certainly a very important topic,” says UTMB’s Tom Geisbert. But he says that the vaccine Walsh used needs three doses to trigger a protective immune response, which is neither practical nor feasible for wild apes. Instead, the team should check the safety of other vaccines based on weakened viruses, which work after a single injection.