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Abstract
[Jan Moor-Jankowski]'s professional life was marked by several hard-fought battles. In 1983, as chief editor and founder of the Journal of Medical Primatology, he published a letter from Shirley McGreal, chairwoman of the International Primate Protection League, which criticised an Austrian drug company's plans to capture wild chimps for hepatitis research. The publication of the letter prompted the firm, Immuno AG, to sue for libel against Moor-Jankowski, the journal publisher, McGreal, and the publisher of New Scientist, which had written a news story about the plan. The suit triggered a 7-year legal battle that was eventually thrown out in a ruling by the New York Court of Appeals. "That law suit was a protracted ordeal", recalls McGreal. She remembers Moor-Jankowski as a "charming person, an impressive person", who became increasingly interested in the protection of primates during his life. For much of the duration of the libel case, Moor-Jankowski was the sole defendant after the others settled. In 1996, he explained to The Scientist magazine why he persevered. "As a very young boy I fought the Germans for freedom", he said. "I didn't want to stand up for muzzling."