Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 1.4
“The Alpha Males” as described in
Dukelow's topic of the same name. The first directors
of the seven national primate research centers and NIH
staff, taken in Bethesda, 1965. Front, left to right:
William Montagna, Oregon NPRC; Geoffrey Bourne,
Yerkes NPRC; Lloyd Neurauter, NIH staff; Leon
Schmidt, California NPRC; Harry Harlow, Wisconsin
NPRC; Bernard Trum, New England NPRC. Back:
Theodore Ruch, Washington NPRC; Arthur Riopelle,
Tulane (Delta) NPRC, and Willard (Hal) Eyestone, the
first director of the NIH's NPRC program. (Photo
courtesy of Dr R.W. Dukelow and the Jacobsen Library,
Wisconsin NPRC.)
the NIH's Division of Research Facilities and Resources.
This division later became the NIH Division of Research
Resources (DRR) and, in 1990, the National Center for
Research Resources (NCRR).
1960
1980: PERIOD OF GROWTH IN
A WORLD OF INCREASING
CONSTRAINTS
Emulation of the Center Concept
General
By 1972, there were 40 research centers in the world
devoted to experimentation with nonhuman primates and
another 1800 institutions using nonhuman primates in
research (
Fridman, 1972
). Fridman described growth in the
field as “explosive.” Between 1965 and 1971, the number of
research projects using nonhuman primates increased from
666 to 1183 in the USA, an 80% increase (
Goodwin, 1975a
).
Referring to data provided by the Primate Information
Center of the Washington NPRC, Goodwin reported that the
5000 nonhuman primate references on record in 1960 had
increased sevenfold to 35 000 by 1971. The status, usage,
and availability of nonhuman primates in the USA during
this period have been extensively reviewed by the Institute
of Laboratory Animal Resources (
Southwick, 1975
).
e
National Primate Research Centers
Program Today
In 1999, an eighth center was added to the NPRC program.
Following the submission of a grant application by the
Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR) to
the NIH, an award was made by NCRR that formally
established the Southwest NPRC, already a fully func-
tional nonhuman primate research and resource center at
the SFBR in San Antonio. By the end of 2007, the eight
NPRCs had 320 core doctoral scientists, 2000 collabora-
tors and affiliates, and a total of about 26 000 nonhuman
primates representing 20 different species or species
groups including 17 250 rhesus monkeys (J. D. Harding,
personal communication, 2010). The program was very
successful. The eight centers played a pioneering role in
which multidisciplinary interactions among veterinarians,
reproductive physiologists, and behaviorists were crucial
in developing techniques for large-scale captive breeding
of macaques. As a measure of the center's impact on
science more broadly,
Fridman (1972)
noted that the
number of scientific publications based on research using
nonhuman primates trebled in the 4- to 5-year period
following 1964. He pointed out that the temporal rela-
tionship of this phenomenon to the establishment of the
centers was not accidental.
Southwest Foundation for Research and
Education
The Southwest Foundation for Research and Education
(SFRE) was established in San Antonio, Texas, in 1941 and
it first obtained baboons in 1957 (
Vagtborg, 1973
). In 1958,
the NIH made a grant award to SFRE to support the
development and operation of a baboon colony, and this
support continued until 1972. In addition to the research
