Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
(
Sabin and Wright, 1934
). This report was the beginning of
a concern that henceforth was to become inextricably
associated with the interaction of macaques and man.
facet of rhesus monkey biology. Studies of monkey
biology, as an end in itself, did not come until later.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NATIONAL
INSTITUTES OF HEALTH'S NATIONAL
PRIMATE RESEARCH CENTERS PROGRAM
IN THE USA: CROSSING THE
THRESHOLD
Initial Activity
The extended process that led to the establishment of the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Primate
Research Centers Program (NPRCP) has been well docu-
mented (
Anonymous, 1968
). It dates back to 1947 and
1949, when the NIH unsuccessfully tried to establish
a procurement program to make an adequate supply of
chimpanzees available to researchers in the USA.
In the period from 1955 to 1957, a number of groups
and individuals advising the NIH and the National
Academy of Sciences-National Research Council noted the
need for developing additional nonhuman primate research
facilities. Not much happened until James Watt, the
director of the NIH National Heart Institute (NHI, even-
tually to become the National Heart, Lung, and Blood
Institute or NHLBI), and eventually the director of the NIH,
James Shannon, became interested in the problem.
Other Contributions
The Work of Harry Harlow
Harry Harlow started his studies on the learning abilities of
monkeys in 1930 at the University of Wisconsin. After
conducting comparative studies of learning capabilities of
cebus and rhesus monkeys at the local Vilas Park Zoo, he
developed a modest laboratory on the university campus.
During a career spanning nearly 50 years, Harlow expanded
these resources into a large interdisciplinary research
complex that included the Wisconsin National Primate
Research Center (
Davenport, 1979
). The research enter-
prise eventually had a staff of over 200 people and
a nonhuman primate colony numbering in excess of 1000
monkeys.
Harlow shed light on the nature and limits of rhesus
monkey intelligence. Studies in the infant monkey nursery
focused on the results of enriched versus impoverished
social rearing conditions, development of measures of
learning ability, and surrogate-mother testing to demon-
strate the importance of infant
maternal tactile sensations
relative to biological drives such as hunger. His work
opened new areas of study including nonhuman primate
parent
e
child relationships, peer interaction, play, hetero-
sexual behavior, emotions such as love, and psychological
impairments that result from social deprivation and sepa-
ration (
Suomi and Leroy, 1982
).
e
Developing the Concept
In 1956, Karl F. Meyer, a veterinarian who later became
known to the world of science for his research in micro-
biology and directorship of the University of California at
San Francisco's Hooper Institute, visited the Sukhumi
station in the USSR (
Figure 1.3
). On his return, he urged
Shannon to develop a nonhuman primate research colony in
the USA. In the same year, Watt, along with Paul Dudley
White, President Eisenhower's physician, also visited
Sukhumi. They were particularly interested in the baboon
studies there on the role of social stress as a causal factor in
essential hypertension (
Smith, 1975
).
Watt's report led the advisory council of the NHI in
1957 to recommend the development of a nonhuman
primate colony to serve as a site for a long-term multidis-
ciplinary approach to research on cardiovascular problems.
Shannon, probably one of the NIH's most visionary leaders,
had differing views about the wisdom of establishing
a single station with a focus limited only to long-term
cardiovascular research.
In late 1958, the NIH concluded that a nonhuman
primate station was both feasible and desirable. With
increased interest in this idea within Congress, the NIH
began to plan for a station. Conspicuous in this planning
Breeding and Reproductive Physiology
Surprisingly little information exists on the subject of
nonhuman primate reproductive physiology and breeding
prior to the 1960s. The first chimpanzee, or any ape for that
matter, was not born in captivity until 1915 (
Montane,
1915
). As late as 1938, Carl Hartman, a prominent repro-
ductive physiologist, predicted that rhesus monkeys would
not breed in the American tropics (
Rawlins and Kessler,
1986
).
Gertrude van Wagenen, a faculty member in the
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Yale
University School of Medicine, may have been the first to
establish a captive rhesus monkey laboratory breeding
colony (
van Wagenen, 1972
; D. M. Horstmann, personal
communication, 1989). Over a career spanning 45 years,
she collected detailed information from birth to death on all
of the 1261 monkeys that lived in the colony. The colony
produced 600 live births through 15 generations. Her many
publications provided an abundance of basic information
on rhesus reproduction and rearing. This work represents
one of the first major efforts to focus on characterizing this
