No Monkey Business

Harvard owns and operates the New England Regional Primate Research Center with the help of a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). There, and at seven other facilities in the Medical area, are housed the animals used by Harvard researchers--everything from dogs and cats to monkeys and pigs, sheep and goats. Last year there was an average daily census of more than 50,000 animals at Med School facilities.

The approximately 20 researchers who work at the Primate Center in Southboro hold Medical School appointments and conduct research in a diverse array of fields, including infectious diseases, psychobiology, pathobiology, viral oncology and diseases of primates. The center is one of seven nationwide that are under the auspices of the NIH.

In spite of the several animal research bills pending before Congress, including the well-supported Research Modernization Act, Harvard researchers seem most concerned by activity at the state level to restrict the use of pound animals. "Most of the concern seems to be with dogs and particularly so-called pound animals," said Dr. A. Clifford Barger, Pfeiffer Professor of Physiology.

The state Pound Seizure Law allows medical research institutions to obtain pound animals for use in experimentation. Under provisions of the law, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) retains inspection rights of all animal research.

Barger, who as chairman of the Med School's animal committee in 1957 helped write the pound bill, uses dogs for his research on hypertension, which he says afflicts between 30 40 million Americans and can lead to heart failure, renal failure and strokes. He simulates renal-vascular hypertension in dogs by means of a surgically implanted cuff that puts pressure on the renal artery.

While most of the dogs are sacrificed during or after the research, Barger claims they are well treated and are saved from certain death at the pounds. He said the "so-called humane society" puts to death 30,000 dogs in Massachusetts each year. "We extend their lives," he added.

Now several groups, including the state's SPCA and the New England Anti-vivisection Society, are attempting to repeal the pound law. Dr. Ronald Hunt, director of the center and professor of Comparative Pathology, is coordinating an effort by several Boston area medical schools to thwart this attempt.

Harvard researchers are concerned also with federal legislation that would amend the federal Animal Welfare Act to define pain more broadly. "The notion that everything is painful is an erroneous concept," Barger said. "If the animals suffer we can't do the experiments."

"We try not to create anything that is going to be painful or harmful to the animal," said Dr. Richard Rodger, assistant clinical veterinarian at the center. "We're here to help animals as well as to aid research."

Rodger said the Massachusetts SPCA has objected to the Primate Center's use of restraining "chairs" in the course of research. Monkeys at the center are less tame than dogs used in research, he said, because often they come to the center as wild adults, making it necessary to sedate them before experimentation and then to immobilize them in a chair.