Last week National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins
announced that his agency is phasing out support of use of chimpanzee in research.
This was not a surprise. The government took steps two years ago to retire 310
chimps from the lab but left 50 in reserve for so-called emergencies. The
animals have been used in AIDS and ebola research and development of other
disease treatments. (Chimpanzees are for example the only other species in
addition to man that suffers from Hepatitis C.) Collins’ most recent edict
sends those last monkeys to Chimp Haven, a government run rest home in Louisiana
where they can live out their final days licking their wounds in peace.
Pressure for this decision had been building recently with the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service granting research chimpanzees endangered species status,
earlier this year, and requests to use chimps for any kind of scientific
endeavor practically non-existent recently, per the feds.
According to Nature the big losers in this
policy change will be a facility in Bastrop, a few miles outside Austin, owned
by the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center which houses 139 chimps
owned by the federal government, and the private Southwest National Primate
Research Center outside San Antonio which has 20 of the government’s animals.
Next, the NIH must decide what to do with yet another 82 of the primates also
at Southwest whose room and board is paid by Uncle Sam. Christian Abee,
director of MD Anderson’s Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research
in Bastrop told Nature that the NIH ruling will for all
intents and purposes end research in Bastrop since all the animals used are
owned by the federal government. NIH Director Collins went out of his way to
praise the Bastrop center which is said to do only behavioral and observational
research. The approach in San Antonio apparently involves a more invasive
touch.
The federal decision also casts an unaccustomed light on one of
the most secretive non-governmental organizations in a state known for
secretive non-governmental organizations: the Southwest Research Center aka the
Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research aka the Southwest National
Primate Research Center whose origins date back to 1941, founded by polymath
Tom Slick—cattleman, wildcatter, explorer and presumed spy. Slick’s career is
too varied to do justice here but suffice it to say he was a successful energy
entrepreneur who also dabbled in the occult. The center he founded has also
done serious science, its methods being more of an issue, particularly animal
experimentation. This privately-owned San Antonio center does research for both
the federal government and industry. It was once also said to have the only
private Level 4 Biosafety Lab in the country. As regards animal health and
safety Southwest has been repeatedly dinged by the federal government for poor
treatment of primates. People for Ethical Treatment of Animals has previously
placed former Southwest director Dr. John VandeBerg on its “Vivsector of the
Month” list, because of the treatment of chimps under his care.
The federal decision sends the chimpanzees into retirement but does little to assuage the lot of baboons of which, once again, the Slick center outside San Antonio is said to be the biggest player in terms of medical research. More than 1400 of these animals were reported residing there in February of this year. According to provisions of the Animal Welfare Act, labs must report a census of lab animals to the Department of Agriculture each year. According to last year's figures almost 1800 non-human primates were being held but not experimented upon at Southwest's campuses, while almost 1300 were the subject of experiments. In fact, the good Dr. VandeBerg has written a book about the subject of baboons in the lab.
“The baboon is a relative newcomer to the repertoire of nonhuman primates used in biomedical research,” he wrote in the appropriately-titled The Baboon in Biomedical Research. “However, in less than 50 years since its first use in the U. S., it has become one of the most popular laboratory primate species. It is larger than the other widely used monkey species, making it advantageous for many types of experiments and technological developments. It is extraordinarily hardy and highly fecund in captivity. It closely resembles humans in a variety of physiological and disease processes, such as cholesterol metabolism, early stages of atherosclerosis, and alcoholic liver disease. Its chromosomes closely resemble those of humans, and many genes of the two species lie in the same chromosomal order.
“Among all primates, baboons are the most widely used models for the genetics of susceptibility to complex diseases and they are the first nonhuman primate for which a framework genetic linkage map was established. In addition, the baboon genome is currently being sequenced, and as a result the utility of this species for biomedical research will be dramatically increased.” In response to the federal decision VandeBerg wrote in reply to an email asking for comment: "I am no longer director of the SNPRC, although I can assure you that the cessation of research with chimpanzees does not mean the end of the primate center. The research done with chimpanzees was only a small fraction of the research conducted at the SNPRC." Contrary to what you may think, the decision to give chimps a reprieve from the scalpel, needle and electrode had nothing to do with an outbreak of humanity on the part of the scientific establishment in Washington. Instead, chimp research is just no longer deemed necessary. Hallelujah. Hepatitis C now has a cure. The Institute of Medicine reached the conclusion a couple of years ago that other means exist to get what scientists require, including computer modeling, mice, and, God forbid, human volunteers. One of the modalities that was not mentioned but apparently also applies is increased use of our DNA for modeling.
Not just in Texas. PETA maintains a kind of rogue’s gallery of worst labs in the country for animal abuse and a frequent flyer in the rankings is the University of California San Francisco, an exclusively health-related research institution. UCSF has also been cited by the federal government for animal abuse, the last time in 2010 resulting in severe fines for behavior like failing to give pain medication to animals that have undergone surgical procedures. UCSF scientists invented the Hepatitis B vaccine used worldwide, by the way, required of all healthcare workers in the U.S. and developed by animal studies. At the University of California scientists are already increasing research on humans. Just last year UCSF took a step in that direction, taking over Oakland Children’s Hospital in San Francisco’s East Bay in order, the university said, to have more African-American kids for study, especially their DNA (due to wider variability in African ancestry individuals’ genetic makeup.) The NIH decision may reflect a trend in which we as a society are moving back to humans as primary study subjects, with the only difference being less invasive procedures than what has been done to monkeys. What this all means for the Southwest center is unclear but the chance that it may no longer be cutting edge is the hope of animal rights’ activists. But don't hold your breadth.
In a letter to the New York Times two years ago Dr. VandeBerg argued that chimpanzee science should continue if only to aid ape health in the wild, an argument that did not strike the federal regulators as particularly persuasive. Per a published report, Dr. VandeBerg was recently relegated to performing an experiment in which opossums had sun block applied and microwave radiation shined on their skin in order to see if the sun block worked to prevent cancer. You’ll be happy to know it did. Overall, animal studies may be falling on hard times except in places like the military (again in San Antonio, at the base that includes Brooke Army Medical Center) where training often includes use of animals for practice in surgical procedures and wound care—causing the injury and then treating it, although the subjects are said not to be primates, whatever difference that makes. However it's done it’s an ugly business that has, up until now, been deemed in humanity’s best interests. "The primate center directors as a group were not happy with the decision," Dr. Warner C. Greene director of the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology at UCSF, who served on the original Institute of Medicine committee that decided to move away from chimps, wrote in an email yesterday. "However it garnered wide support throughout the scientific and lay communities. Previously only two countries in the world had essentially no limitations on biomedical research with chimpanzees: Gabon and the United States."
“We successfully trained 12 male marmosets [a South American monkey] for treadmill running,” according to a paper detailing another recent Southwest-related primate experiment. “The entire process – from training subjects to enter a clear plastic capture container to running at speeds of 1.2 mph for 30min duration – was accomplished with daily sessions (including weekends) in 4 weeks. Furthermore, marmosets were able to maintain this rate of exercise for 3 days per week for 3 months. Our use of positive reinforcement techniques to train the marmosets to this procedure provided a safe environment for both marmoset and experimenter. Alternative procedures, such as putting a harness on the marmoset and tethering him to the treadmill for exercise, could potentially be unsafe particularly when putting the marmoset in a harness which increases handling time and increases biting risk.” Is this science? It sounds like torture.
