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| From left, Kathleen Conlee of The Humane Society of the United States visits with Tine Geurts, Sam Pugh and Caisie Pitman of Great Ape Trust of Iowa after a presentation on HSUS's Chimps Deserve Better campaign. |
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Humane Society executive supports The Trust’s cognitive work with apes
Though encouraging, the decrease in the number of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) used for invasive biomedical research and testing is hardly a sanguine moment for the backers of a Humane Society of the United States campaign to end the practice.
Kathleen Conlee, the HSUS’s director of program management for animal research issues, was a recent guest at Great Ape Trust of Iowa. Conlee deals with an array of issues surrounding the use of animals in biomedical research for the HSUS, and oversees its Chimps Deserve Better campaign. Chimps Deserve Better has twin goals of phasing out the use of chimpanzees for invasive, painful biomedical research and permanently retiring them to reputable sanctuaries.
The estimated 1,300 chimpanzees in nine U.S. laboratories – this does not include research facilities such as Great Ape Trust of Iowa, where the research is scientific, non-invasive and voluntary on the part of apes – represents a decline from a high of more than 1,800, reached in the mid-1990s after an acceleration of chimpanzee breeding programs before it was discovered that their usefulness as a model for the study of human diseases such as HIV was less than predicted. Their use for research has naturally declined as scientists recognize their unsuitability as models for human disease research failures of the past, the expense of the research ($300,000 to $500,000 per chimpanzee, most of it for ape care) and ethical concerns.
But obstacles remain in the fight to give the non-human primates a more dignified life, said Conlee, speaking at one of the series of brown-bag lunches held regularly at Great Ape Trust for staff development and education.
She said the United States stands alone with Gabon in Africa as the only countries using chimps for harmful research. Such research has been banned by other developed nations, including the United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, and the Netherlands. Japanese research institutions have also voluntarily stopped the practice.
Additionally, great apes have legal rights in some areas, including on the Balearic Islands, an archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the autonomous communities of Spain. Similar legislation is pending before the full parliament of Spain. That proposal does not seek to grant great apes rights available only to humans; rather, it cites biological and scientific evidence that great apes are like human children in experiencing an emotional and intellectual conscience and should be afforded basic legal protection from “slavery, torture, death and extinction.”
The Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Maintenance and Protection Act (CHIMP Act) of 2000, which became public law in December 2000, measurably improved chimpanzee well-being in the United States. It established a national sanctuary system for federally owned or supported chimpanzees no longer needed for research. Chimp Haven Inc., an independent, non-profit sanctuary established in 1995 to provide lifetime care for chimpanzees no longer used for medical research, as pets or for entertainment, was awarded a 10-year contract to oversee the national sanctuary system in 2002.
The CHIMP Act became “extremely controversial,” Conlee said, and provisions were included that allowed for chimpanzees retired to the sanctuary to be returned to a lab for research. The thresholds for doing so are high, requiring among other things a 60-day public comment period that research facilities likely would find onerous, and as a result none of the exceptions has been invoked, she said.
But that doesn’t mean they won’t be, Conlee warned. Chimps Deserve Better faces obstacles from those maintaining government-supported chimpanzee colonies who fear losing that funding. She said those interests argue in favor of the use of chimpanzees for Hepatitis C research, though the virus can be cultured in vitro, and unknown future needs. Other hurdles include the difficulty in tracking the number of chimpanzees involved in private research by pharmaceutical companies and the possible transfer of ownership of chimpanzees so they are all privately held. The campaign also faces resistance from animal research advocacy groups, including the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science.
As a result of the CHIMP Act, regulation and oversight is provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but the general sentiment among animal-welfare groups such as HSUS is that the regulations are too lax and do not adequately provide for the welfare of captive great apes used for biomedical research. For example, the minimum cage size for an adult chimpanzee used for research is 5-feet by 5-feet by 7-feet high.
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| Dr. Duane Rumbaugh, right, scientist emeritus at Great Ape Trust, confers with Andrew Rowan, the chief executive of Humane Society International. |
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Chimpanzee welfare advocates have had successes. In 2002, the highly publicized Coulston Foundation, a for-profit testing laboratory in Alamogordo, N.M., was shuttered. At one time, Coulston had control of some 650 chimpanzees – nearly half of the U.S. population in research laboratories and the largest captive chimpanzee colony in the world – and aimed not only to corner the market on chimpanzee research, but also to conduct the testing the way it was in the 1970s, before the treatment of animals in laboratories was strictly regulated.
Coulston’s history of providing substandard care was well documented during years of regulatory violations, and after it closed in financial collapse, the 266 chimpanzees were retired to the sanctuary Save the Chimps A year earlier, 300 had been transferred to the Alamogordo Primate Facility, Coulston’s successor and a National Institutes of Health-supported facility maintained at Holloman Air Force Base, where chimpanzees used in aeronautical and space research had been bred, housed, experimented on and ultimately killed since at least 1954.
Though more research facilities are divesting themselves of chimpanzee research, Conlee said, not all of the developments are positive for great apes. For example, officials with the Primate Foundation of Arizona last year announced plans to close that research facility in Mesa by 2010 and transfer ownership of 69 chimpanzees to the federal government rather than relocate them in sanctuaries. Most will go to the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas-Houston, and “M.D. Anderson does do harmful research,” Conlee said. Experts at The Trust added that interesting and non-invasive research on chimpanzee cognition is also conducted at M.D. Anderson.
Currently, about 650 chimpanzees used for biomedical research in the United States are considered federally owned. Those colonies are managed by the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), and a breeding moratorium applied since 1995 was recently made permanent. No such moratorium applies to the privately owned colonies, and though the owners are not actively breeding chimps for research, pharmaceutical companies and other for-profit businesses have been reluctant to join the ban, Conlee said.
Despite threats, “the stars generally seem aligned” for more altruistic treatment of chimpanzees, Conlee said, and the Chimps Deserve Better campaign comes at a time when it is becoming ethically unacceptable to use them for biomedical research. Mounting scientific evidence supports chimpanzees’ intelligence and emotions; it is difficult to meet their social needs in laboratory settings; and their long life spans require financial commitments for their care for decades to come, according to Conlee. Also, she said, biomedical research with chimpanzees is highly suspect among scientists, who acknowledge that there may have been some benefits, but feel that the same evidence might have been gained without using chimps.
Public opinion appears to be on the side of the Chimps Deserve Better backers. In a 2001 public opinion poll, Zogby International found that 90 percent of Americans surveyed think the confinement of chimpanzees in government-approved cages is unacceptable. Also among those surveyed, 65 percent said it’s unacceptable to kill animals for research and 54 percent believe it is unacceptable for chimpanzees to be subjected to research that causes them to suffer for human benefit. The 2001 poll reflected a significant shift in thinking. In 1985, 63 percent of American surveyed said scientists should be allowed to do research that causes pain and injury to animals such as dogs and chimps if it produces new information, compared with 44 percent in 2001.
Dr. Benjamin Beck, The Trust’s conservation director, said the visit by Conlee and Andrew Rowan, executive vice president for operations and chief executive of Humane Society International, “was a wonderful opportunity for The Trust staff to become fully informed about the use of great apes in biomedical research.”
“While we have not taken an organizational position in this discussion, many of our senior staff members have signed the HSUS petition,” Beck said. “We are also gratified that Andrew and Kathleen reaffirmed their support for the cognitive research we conduct at Great Ape Trust,” Beck continued. “We continue to admire HSUS’s inclusive and non-confrontational approach to the resolution of controversial animal-protection issues.”
Great Ape Trust Background
Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a scientific research facility in southeast Des Moines dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence. When completed, Great Ape Trust will be the largest great ape facility in North America and one of the first worldwide to include all four types of great ape – bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans – for noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities.
Great Ape Trust is dedicated to providing sanctuary and an honorable life for great apes, studying the intelligence of great apes, advancing conservation of great apes and providing unique educational experiences about great apes. Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit organization and is certified by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). |
Great Ape Trust is certified by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums
