Lab seeks to experiment on endangered species
Rare monkey may hold clues to AIDS vaccine

Mike Stobbe, Associated Press
Published: Monday, April 10, 2006

ATLANTA -- As monkeys go, sooty mangabeys aren't cute.

Big-fanged, grey and hairy, they simply stare when threatened. Few zoos stock them. Some animal-rights advocates can't even spell the species' name.

Nevertheless, the sooties are at the centre of a precedent-setting debate over whether researchers should be allowed to experiment on an endangered species.

Scientists at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta have nurtured a group of these primates for decades. But after Yerkes started the colony, U.S. federal officials listed sooties as endangered.

The result: Yerkes has the world's largest collection of captive sooties, but with little hope of scientific benefit.

"We don't need them around just to look at them. We're not a zoo," said Thomas Gordon, Yerkes' associate director for scientific programs.

Recently, Yerkes researchers proposed a novel solution: the primate centre will help conserve sooties in the wild in exchange for permission to do AIDS-related research on them here.

Such a trade-off has never before been permitted, said Timothy Van Norman, chief of the international permits branch at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "This is new territory," he said.

Yerkes officials are hopeful. Animal-rights activists are horrified.

"It's a deal with the devil," said Rachel Weiss, president of Laboratory Primate Advocacy Group, a Georgia-based animal-rights organization.

Yerkes -- part of Emory University -- is one of eight federally funded national primate research centres in the U.S. Its scientific contributions include new understanding of monkey and chimp behaviour and development of an experimental AIDS vaccine. It has about 3,600 primates at a 10-hectare campus in Atlanta and a 47-hectare field station in nearby Lawrenceville.

Yerkes' colony of sooty mangabeys was started in the late 1960s, when the centre picked up about 30, some from Kansas City's zoo. The colony grew, and now numbers about 230.

It would be larger, but the Yerkes staff segregate males from females and give females Norplant-like birth-control pellets. The centre spends roughly $170,000 each year for sooty caretaking, and is out of space to house any more.

In 1988, U.S. Fish and Wildlife listed sooties as endangered. That means Yerkes may not do invasive research, such as a biopsy, unless it benefits the species.

"We can't even take a blood sample for research purposes," complained Preston Marx, a researcher at Tulane University, which also has a sooty colony.

In the 1990s, researchers learned sooties are natural carriers of a monkey-form of the AIDS virus. Other types of monkeys get sick from the virus. Sooties don't. Researchers say if they can learn why sooties stay healthy, it may lead to new weapons against human HIV.

To do that, scientists want to expose the monkeys to different viruses and do biopsies or other invasive research.

For a decade, Yerkes has been asking the government to drop sooties from the endangered list or consider other ways to allow research.

In July, the centre wrote Fish and Wildlife seeking the right to conduct research on the Yerkes sooties. The request is under review, officials said.

But animal-rights advocates are uncomfortable applying such a tradeoff to lab animals.

Sooties live in large pens at the Yerkes field station, with some freedom to roam and socialize. But being a research monkey is a "terrible life" that often involves indoor caging and pain, said Weiss, who was a Yerkes animal-care technician in the mid-1990s.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006