It was considered a significant concession to critics when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced in January that it would refrain from moving 186 aging chimps back into active research. The biomedical agency would delay a decision on the chimps’ fate, it said, pending a study of the scientific need for chimpanzee research by the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine (IOM). The chimps in question, housed at the Alamogordo Primate Facility in New Mexico, had become a focus of controversy after NIH announced in August, 2010 that it was moving them back into active research at the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio, Texas. The NIH’s announcement came with a promise, in the agency’s statement, that pending the results of the IOM study, “the Alamogordo chimpanzees will not be used in invasive research.”
What was not known at the time was that NIH had, last summer, transferred 14 chimps that were part of the Alamogordo colony to the San Antonio facility. That emerged today, when the Washington, D.C.-based animal rights group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed this petition asking NIH director Francis Collins to return the 14 chimps, aged 18 to 30, to the Alamogordo facility, which is not an active research facility. All 14 are infected with hepatitis C. (In the past, NIH has argued that work in chimps could lead to the development of a hepatitis C vaccine.)
The PCRM discovered, from this document released to it under the Freedom of Information Act, that the 14 chimps were moved to San Antonio in two batches, last June and July.
The group’s petition states that Collins’ action in moving them to a facility “where they are now at risk of being subject to invasive experiments” was “arbitrary and capricious” and so violates the Administrative Procedures Act, a law governing the behavior of US government agencies. The law allows judicial review of controversial agency decisions.
The group also argues that NIH’s commitment to keep the 186 remaining Alamogordo chimps off-duty until IOM weighs in need for chimpanzee research is at odds with its silence about the 14 already-transferred chimps.
“Conspicuously absent from the [NIH’s] statement is a similar pronouncement regarding the 14 chimpanzees that NIH transferred to SNPRC just prior to scheduling this reassessment. NIH must apply the same standards to all of the chimpanzees under its control by moving the transferred 14 chimpanzees out of [the Southwest National Primate Research Center],” the petitioners write.
The group also posted written summaries of the voluminous medical records of two of the 14 chimps: 29-year-old Rosie and 30-year-old Cammy. They were prepared by Mel Richardson, a veterinarian in Paradise, California, who was paid by PCRM to compile them from the FOIA-obtained medical records. He writes that Rosie has been anaesthetized or otherwise chemically immobilized 99 times during 28 years in research, and that she suffers from morbid obesity and heart arrhythmias. Cammy has been anaesthetized 108 times and suffers from kidney insufficiency.
Collins was not immediately available to comment today; this space will be updated as soon as he responds.
UPDATE, March 3 2011:
The NIH Office of Extramural Research responded today with the following statement:
NIH was aware that it had already moved 14 chimps to Southwest when it issued the statement about the other APF chimps. It is important to note that at least 30 other chimps had been moved out of APF over the past ten years as they were needed in research. The transfer of the chimps from APF to Southwest had been in the planning stages since early 2009 and all APF chimps were staged as to when they would move. These 14 were moved as part of the first planned stage. Other APF chimps were to be moved after remodeling of the Southwest facility was further along.