Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Delhi to ask Desai personally to make an exception for
testing polio vaccine, but the ban was not lifted (H. T.
Mahler, personal communication, 2008).
Similar Actions in Other Countries
Other countries also took similar restrictive actions. Infor-
mation provided by
Kavanaugh and Bennett (1984)
showed
that about 95% of monkeys imported into the USA during
the period 1964
1980 came from 13 countries. By 1980,
all three of the major exporters, Peru, India, and Colombia,
had banned exports. The others, with the exception of the
Philippines and Indonesia, also had taken restrictive
actions. By 1980, it had become virtually impossible to
purchase a wild-caught rhesus monkey.
e
Responding to the Constraints
Rise of Domestic Breeding
An increasing number of people began to express concern
about the future availability of nonhuman primates in the
late 1960s and to advocate increased captive breeding
(
Schmidt, 1969; van Bekkum and Balner, 1969; World
Health Organization Scientific Group, 1971; Neurauter and
Goodwin, 1972; Hobbs, 1972; Honjo and Nomura, 1972
).
Serious efforts were initiated at a few sites in the USA
to breed more nonhuman primates in captivity. Thorington
identified 125 breeding colonies in the USAwith a total of
10 293 breeders that produced 2271 live births in 1970
(
Thorington, 1971
). Litton Bionetics, Inc., CRO in the
Washington, DC area, was described as one of the largest
nonhuman primate centers in the world (
Goodwin, 1975a
),
producing about 4000 rhesus, African green monkeys, and
baboons for use in cancer and other research over a 10-year
period beginning in 1961 (
Goodwin, 1975b
).
Henry Foster, a veterinarian, looked into the future in
the early 1970s and saw a commercial opportunity. Foster,
the president of Charles River Breeding Laboratories,
thought the time was right for doing with monkeys what he
did so successfully by producing SPF rodents (
Figure 1.8
).
With help from an NIH contract, Foster stocked a mangrove
island in the Florida keys, which he renamed Key Lois,
with 600 tuberculosis-free and B virus-free rhesus monkey
breeders by mid-1974 (
Southwick, 1975; Pucak et al.,
1982
). The FDA awarded an additional contract to Charles
River Breeding Laboratories in 1977 to produce monkeys
primarily for testing polio vaccine. This was done by
releasing founder stock from Key Lois on a nearby island,
Raccoon Key. While the breeding project was very
successful for producing high quality monkeys, they
quickly destroyed the mangrove habitat and raised serious
environmental concerns. Public objections to the project
eventually caused it to be moved to a more conventional
and less controversial location on the mainland. In later
FIGURE 1.8
Henry Foster, a veterinarian and founder of Charles
River Breeding Labs, pioneered in the technological development and
marketing of SPF rodents for biomedical research. He went on to be
the first to successfully apply the same ideas to the production of B virus
and tuberculosis free rhesus monkeys from his free-ranging island
breeding colony near Marathon Key in Florida. (Photo courtesy of Charles
River Laboratories International, Inc.)
years the breeding stock was acquired by a major phar-
maceutical firm which continued to produce rhesus
monkeys free of tuberculosis and B virus.
During this time the US government, specifically the
NIH and the FDA, also began to take steps to avoid what
was increasingly being recognized as an inevitable problem
in the supply of nonhuman primates. Beginning in 1973,
the NIH and FDAwere able to allocate funds to specifically
establish nonhuman primate breeding resources.
Goodwin
(1975b)
reviewed the status of what was being accom-
plished. The FDA had awarded contracts to the CPRC in
Puerto Rico and the Tulane NPRC to develop semi-free
ranging island and corral colonies of rhesus monkeys. The
NIH's DRR (later NCRR) negotiated contract awards for
two harem-type rhesus monkey breeding projects at
Hazleton Laboratories' facility in Alice, Texas, and at
Litton Bionetic's facility in Yemassee, South Carolina.
Morgan Island, a large tidewater island, was the principal
breeding site for the latter project and later became the
largest semi-free ranging breeding colony of Indian origin
rhesus monkeys in the country.
DRR also awarded a contract to breed squirrel monkeys
at the CPRC. At the same time, the intramural Division of
Research Services (DRS, later NCRR) of the NIH was
making contract awards for a rhesus monkey harem-type
breeding projects at Perrine, Florida, with the Papanicoulou
Institute and at Gulf South Research Institute's facility in
New Iberia, Louisiana.
