From misery to sanctuary: Photos tell chimps’ tale
It’s the time of year when many of us pull out our cameras and photo albums, intent on marking memories as well as the passage of time. We smile for the camera today while we laugh at yesterday’s out-of-style haircuts and clothing.
The illustrations and photos that accompany this story take that to another level. If a picture is worth a thousand words, the before-and-after photos of Rosie, Elijah, Cammy and others speak volumes. Unfortunately, to get to their happy “after” — and there is one — it’s necessary to take a hard look at their absolutely awful “before.”
In the 1950s, 65 infant chimps were moved from West Africa to Alamogordo for biomedical
research. In 2010, the U.S. government had about 300 chimps in captivity. The only way to know what the more than 100 chimpanzees held at the Alamogordo Primate Facility looked like was to cobble together illustrated likenesses based on grainy black-and white photos in their medical records — and it took Animal Protection of New Mexico filing a Freedom of Information Act request to get those. One look at their stories and it’s no wonder the drawings show dour, joyless beings.
Rosie was born in a lab in 1981 and first used in research when she was just 6 months old. Laura Bonar, a registered nurse and Animal Protection’s chief program and policy officer, says the medical records show that over two decades Rosie “survived at least 100 chemical immobilizations and developed a sensitivity to the drug ketamine, suffering multiple complications from researchers’ continued use of ketamine to sedate her for testing. Rosie has had 15 liver biopsies with little to no pain relief provided and has a history of cardiac arrhythmia.”
Elijah was born on Holloman Air Force Base in 1990. Bonar says, “Medical records document him trying to avoid being darted and forced into squeeze cages when he was 6 years old, with a note from the record saying, ‘He isn’t learning.’” Elijah was shipped back and forth to different laboratories for research by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health and “infected with or exposed to hepatitis A,B, C, and G in studies. He had a liver wedge surgery in 1997 where two-thirds of his left lobe was removed for study without record of pain medication administered, and he developed a hernia from the scar tissue of this surgery in 2001.”
Cammy was born on Holloman Air Force Base in 1980 and taken from her mother shortly after birth. Bonar says, “When Cammy was just a year old, she started being shipped back and forth to the CDC in Phoenix and then Atlanta for use in hepatitis research. … Starting in December 1994 … Cammy was … subject to multiple liver biopsies … has a vulvar laceration … significant swollen lymph nodes in the groin … renal disease and is missing the tip of her tongue.”
Bonar’s group joined forces with then-Gov. Bill Richardson, U.S. Sens. Tom Udall and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, and the same year the illustrations were drawn they persuaded the NIH to stop shipping chimps from Alamogordo to testing labs. (No testing had happened in Alamogordo for a decade.)
Then the NIH went back on its word and shipped 14 more New Mexico chimps to San Antonio, Texas, for potential biomedical research at what is now called Texas Biomedical Research Institute. Rosie, Elijah and Cammy were among them. And for the next several years, Animal Protection of New Mexico, New Mexico leaders and leading scientists worked to spread the word that invasive testing on chimps is scientifically, morally, ethically and financially bankrupt. That chimps are so different from humans on a cellular level that decades of attempts to use them to study/prevent/ cure everything from cancer to hepatitis to AIDS delivered nothing but pain with no gain.
In 2013, the NIH had announced it would retire most of the government-owned chimpanzees but would keep 50 primates — including those New Mexico chimps in San Antonio — available for further invasive testing. Around Thanksgiving 2015, the NIH finally retired those chimps, with Director Francis Collins saying in an internal memo obtained by the Journal that “it is time to acknowledge that there is no further justification for the 50 chimpanzees to continue to be kept available for invasive biomedical research.”
And as 2016 comes to a close, there are new pictures to look at: pictures of Rosie, Elijah, Cammy and other New Mexico chimps at the 200acre Chimp Haven sanctuary near Shreveport, La. One look and there is no question they are sentient beings with the capacity to suffer not just psychological distress and depression — but joy.
Cathy Spraetz, president and CEO of Chimp Haven, says, “We have loved hearing and seeing these chimps hoot with emotion and embrace one another in sanctuary.” Bonar says Chimp Haven provides chimps “access to multi-acre forested habitats, something which is just not possible at APF. At Chimp Haven, they will have the ability to live more naturally in larger, mixed-sex groups, and live in a social setting with their peers.”
Sanctuary is much cheaper than testing, but it isn’t free. (The federal government picks up 75 percent of the sanctuary tab.) The New Mexico Community Foundation’s Chimpanzee Sanctuary Fund, which Bonar helps oversee, has awarded Chimp Haven a $112,500 grant to help support 25 Alamogordo chimps — 15 to be sent early in the new year.
There is more to do in 2017. Bonar says “there are 127 chimps still alive at APF as of Dec. 16, most of whom are elderly and suffer from chronic illness. These chimps deserve improved housing in sanctuary where all their behavioral needs will be met.” Chimp Haven is ready and waiting. Its website says, “We invite others to help us care for the more than 100 chimps who are waiting to make their way to Chimp Haven from Alamogordo, as well as the other 200 plus residents currently at our sanctuary.”