The King of Chimp ExploitationA controversial scientist corners the chimp marketU.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, AUGUST 14, 1995 Nobody in his right mind would want to be responsible for a colony of research chimpanzees. For one thing, a full-grown chimp is stronger than the average man and in some ways about as smart as the average 3-year-old. For another, chimps are staggeringly expensive to breed and keep: $10,000 a year over a chimp’s 60-to-70-year life span. And now, federal funds for biomedical research on chimps are getting tight.
That prospect worries a lot of people. According to critics — and Coulston has many among biomedical researchers and animal welfare activists — he has been irresponsible in his treatment of his animals. Prodded in part by the activist group In Defense of Animals, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited Coulston last month for violations of the Animal Welfare Act that could carry fines of at least $7,500 per day. The charges include substandard housing — the USDA says at least 27 chimps were being kept in cages not much bigger than a bathroom stall — and lapses in care that led to the deaths of several animals. But biomedical researchers are also concerned about the concentration of such a large fraction of the 1,200 research chimps in the United States in the hands of a single person. As federal requirements governing the care of chimps have tightened, virtually all research involving them now takes place at only a handful of labs with the required specialized facilities and experience. Federal programs focusing on diseases such as AIDS and hepatitis, as well as pharmaceutical companies testing new drugs or vaccines, depend upon these labs — and often the labs’ own in-house scientists — to do the work for them. Researchers worry that a near monopoly could drive up the cost of primate research, even though the demand for chimps is declining. Preston Marx, a vaccine researcher with the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York, says, "The idea is, take over all the chimps in the world. It is like a bad Batman plot." Coulston, now 81, has a long history in the primate business. The cigar-chomping native New Yorker was among the first scientists in the 1940s to use primates as models for human physiology. He is widely recognized in the field of toxicology, and he has tested the effects of drugs, food additives, industrial solvents and pesticides on chimps and monkeys. In the ’80s he founded a small primate colony — White Sands Research Center, in Alamogordo, N.M., a mom and pop business that subsisted almost entirely on contract work, testing drugs and chemicals on primates for manufacturers. Coulston instantly became the director of the largest colony of chimps in the world in 1993, when he took over a primate laboratory run by New Mexico State University. NMSU’s lab was one of only six facilities in the country, along with White Sands, that housed chimpanzees used in biomedical research. When the two labs were rolled together into a new entity, called the Coulston Foundation, the number of animals in Coulston’s control tripled to a total of 500 chimps and over 1,000 monkeys. In addition to the animals, NMSU agreed to give him $400,000, as well as several animal facilities, the lease on a brand-new, $10 million federally funded building for housing chimpanzees and approximately $4 million in federal research contracts.
Violations. Coulston’s proposed takeover of the prestigious NYU lab would be a major addition to this already vast empire. Coulston claims that he only has the interests of the animals at heart. But critics say he has already taken on more than he can handle. Earlier this year a congressional plan to give him the $10 million federally funded chimp-housing facility, along with 150 chimps that now belong to the Air Force, was scuttled after famous chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall raised questions about "irregularities and violations" of animal-care regulations at the Coulston Foundation. Last month’s USDA complaint added specifics. According to the USDA, three chimps at the NMSU facilities died a horrible death in the fall of 1993 after a portable heater malfunctioned and sent the temperature in their quarters soaring to 140 degrees. Coulston denies responsibility, saying it was the result of a faulty thermostat and the deaths occurred when NMSU was still officially listed in government documents as responsible for the facility. But according to a Memorandum of Agreement between Coulston and NMSU, Coulston was responsible as of July 1, 1993, for "all functions," including "laboratory animals, medicine and care [and] all facility maintenance." A second incident listed in the USDA complaint occurred on the morning of Dec. 18, 1994, when a caretaker found four monkeys lying dead or dying on the bottoms of their cages. Autopsies on the animals showed they had gone without water for at least three days. Although the caretakers were trained to test the animals’ automatic waterers every day, they had in fact simply been checking off that task on their daily logs without actually performing the test. Coulston’s lawyer denies all of the USDA charges, and Coulston says that the agency has agreed to settle for $25,000. The USDA says that no such deal has been struck. Other critics challenge Coulston’s management of research contracts. At least five monkeys died during caesarean sections performed in the course of testing a painkiller for drug manufacturer Glaxo Wellcome. According to Stephen Easley, an NMSU behavioral biologist who shared responsibility for the study, the veterinarians hired by Coulston to perform the c-sections had virtually no experience with primates. When a team from the National Institutes of Health visited Coulston’s facility last year, they found only one veterinarian who had "the appropriate level of training and experience" to treat chimpanzees. Easley subsequently severed his ties with the Coulston Foundation, but not before writing a letter to Glaxo, warning there was reason to believe a technician had falsified data on the study. According to Coulston, "That’s absolutely, as far as I know, false." A spokeswoman for Glaxo conceded there were "some small problems," but said, "we have confidence in the data." USDA has opened an investigation into the incident. Even Coulston’s critics acknowledge he has taken on an enormous burden. Seven months after he took over the NMSU lab, the grace period allowed before the USDA began requiring larger cages for chimpanzees ended, and primate labs around the country had to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover the cost. In addition, researchers have discovered in the past few years that the chimp is not the model for AIDS they had hoped it would be, which means there is now a chimp surplus — just as federal funds for chimp research are shrinking. Peter Gerone, director of the Tulane Regional Primate Center, in Covington, La., sums it up: "If you said I could have 100 chimps for free, I would say no thanks." All of which makes it easy to see why New York University wants out of the chimp business — and hard to grasp why Coulston wants more animals. Coulston claims he would be doing NYU and the nation a favor by taking over NYU’s Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates, or LEMSIP. "Who in the world has had more experience with the chimpanzee than Fred Coulston?" he asks. But others say that at least part of his motivation for wanting LEMSLP is prestige. "His ego is a blinding thing," says one former colleague. LEMSIP has enjoyed a long reputation for excellence in basic science, claiming the first commercial hepatitis vaccine and the first testing of a vaccine for AIDS. Scientists also point out that the current director of LEMSIP, Jan Moor-Jankowski, is an old rival of Coulston’s. Moor-Jankowski is deeply opposed to a Coulston takeover, but Coulston denies any rivalry.
Bailout. Coulston stands to receive more than $1 million with the transfer of LEMSIP. He says this money will go toward building badly needed new facilities for the New York chimps. But sources with inside knowledge of his finances think he needs it to prop up his operations in New Mexico, which a former employee says had to be bailed out with several million dollars from Coulston’s own pocket. Coulston counters, "I didn’t have to do it. I wanted to." Soon he may have no choice. Next April, a $3 million yearly contract from the NIH that Coulston inherited when he took over the NMSU lab will not be renewed. Those funds, even by Coulston’s admission, are "critical" to his operation in New Mexico. In addition, Moor-Jankowski says that LEMSIP’s two biggest contractors, which do $1.5 million worth of business with the lab each year, have vowed to pull out if Coulston takes over. "If he goes broke, there’s no place in the country for those animals to go," says his former colleague. Indeed, concerns about Coulston’s financial capacity to care for so many animals, as well as his record of alleged negligence, have led Goodall to implore NYU to suspend negotiations for transferring LEMSIP. Goodall wants to see a national plan creating sanctuaries for research chimps that have outlived their usefulness. Estimates for building such a sanctuary range from $1 million to $40 million, but once built it would be far less expensive to keep chimps there than in a laboratory, says Moor-Jankowski. Many researchers think a sanctuary plan is the responsibility of the NIH, which they charge has shirked its responsibility for the long-term care of chimpanzees, particularly those that are chronically infected with the viruses that cause hepatitis and AIDS. According to one NIH scientist, "a lot of people here think [the NIH] is insulated from the chimp problem because we don’t own any. But we paid to breed them. We paid to infect them." NIH Director Harold Varmus has asked for a study to investigate the feasibility of a chimp sanctuary. Coulston, for his part, claims that he is already setting up such a sanctuary in Alamogordo. "There is no place for retirement for the animals," he says, "except in facilities like my own."
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