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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: SEPTEMBER 2006

Primarily Primates will fight trustee's recommendation that
Ohio State University chimps should be sent to Chimp Haven

SAN ANTONIO--Primarily Primates president Wally Swett on August 17, 2006 told news media that the sanctuary will fight the recommendation of court-appointed trustee Charles Jackson III that seven chimpanzees formerly used by Ohio State University researcer Sally Boysen should be transferred to Chimp Haven, of Shreveport, Louisiana.

"We'll fight to the death to keep them from being moved, especially to Chimp Haven," Swett told Mike Lafferty of the Columbus Dispatch.

Both the American Sanctuary Association and the Association of Sanctuaries are highly critical of Chimp Haven, which houses retired chimps for the National Institutes of Health, under a contract which allows NIH to recall the chimps for lab use. Though none have actually been recalled, merely allowing the possibility contravenes the ASA and TAOS accreditation requirements.

Ohio State University reportedly considered Chimp Haven before sending the chimps to Primarily Primates in March 2006. OSU paid Primarily Primates $324,000 to build the chimps' permanent housing and fund their care.

Bexar County District Court Judge Andrew Mireles appointed Jackson to represent the chimps' welfare after PETA and two former OSU chimp caretakers sued Primarily Primates on the chimps' behalf.

PETA and Primarily Primates have frequently conflicted for more than 15 years, beginning when Swett was openly critical of how PETA handed the aftermath of the 1981 "Silver Springs monkeys" case. Monkeys rescued from a Silver Spring research lab eventually died or were euthanized in NIH custody while PETA pursued a decade of litigation that Swett believes kept the monkeys from being released to Primarily Primates or other sanctuaries.

Ex-OSU chimp Kermit, 35, died on arrival at Primarily Primates, which then had 81 chimps. A second ex-OSU chimp, Bobby, 16, died seven weeks later. Necropsies found that both died from pre-existing heart conditions.

Primarily Primates came under intensive activist criticism after three more chimps, received from other institutions, died or were euthanized during the next several months. Responded Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research veterinarian Larry Cummins, "We're sending them up there to die. It's an old folks' home."

"A pre-existing heart condition is a common catchphrase," objected April Truit, founder of the Primate Rescue Center in Nicholasville, Kentucky.

However, heart disease is in fact the leading cause of death among captive great apes, and has become of particular concern to zookeepers because recent deaths of silverback gorillas have significantly narrowed the captive gene pool.

"Adult western lowland gorillas in captivity are dying of an unexplained heart condition called fibrosing cardiomyopathy, which turns healthy heart muscle into fibrous bands unable to pump blood. The condition is similar to a human form of heart disease," freelance Cheryl Lyn Dubas reported on August 21, 2006, in the Washington Post. "Veterinarians Tom Meehan of the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago and Linda Lowenstine of the University of California at Davis calculate that 41% of deaths of captive gorillas--and 70% of deaths of males older than 30--are the result of heart disease, primarily fibrosing cardiomyopathy.

"The toll includes Mopie, at the National Zoo on July 3; Kuja, at the National Zoo on July 1; Pogo, at the San Francisco Zoo on May 24; Tumai, at the Memphis Zoo on May 18; Akbar, at the Toledo Zoo on December 6, 2005; Sam, at the Knoxville Zoo on November 17, 2000; and Michael, at the Gorilla Foundation in California, on April 19, 2000," Dubas recounted.

"The thing that has us stumped," Lowenstine told Dubas, "is that it doesn't appear to be related to coronary artery disease or cholesterol levels."

Meehan and Wake Forest University primatologist Tom Clarkson, DVM, speculated that the disease might be of bacterial or viral origin. It has not been detected in the wild, but almost no health research has been done on wild gorillas.