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> Ten monkeys were shot through the head for a study of gunshot wounds. > Monkeys were operated on without anesthesia so doctors could study shock.
By far the largest single consumer of rhesus monkeys in the U.S., as foreseen in the 1955 treaty, is the polio-vaccine testing program. Lederle Laboratories of Pearl River, N.Y., now the sole U.S. manufacturer of the vaccine, grows the Sabin attenuated virus strains in cultures of African green monkey kidney cells. Samples of each batch of vaccine (currently totaling about 25 million doses a year) are then injected into the brain cavities or spinal columns of 45 rhesus monkeys. After three weeks of clinical observation, the animals are "sacrificed"—killed humanely by an overdose of sodium pentothal—so that their nervous tissues can be examined microscopically for changes that would result from any imperfection in the vaccine. If any are found, that batch of vaccine is thrown out. If none are found, samples of the batch are sent to the Bureau of Biologies, where the process is repeated. Lederle uses 1,200 to 1,500 rhesuses a year for its testing; Biologies uses 2,000 to 2,500. Similar testing of other vaccines may consume 2,000 or 3,000 more.
Scattered around the U.S. are scores of biomedical research facilities that use rhesuses for testing the effects of diet, drugs and other chemicals in relation to a wide variety of human diseases, notably cardiovascular disorders and cancer. Two important studies involve examination of the rhesus fetus while it is still in the womb, letting the pregnancy continue and checking hemoglobin changes that occur about the time of birth, which may be significant in relation to sickle-cell anemia.
For these purposes, the rhesus is considered preferable to other monkeys, both because its body mechanisms closely resemble those of humans and because it has been studied so extensively that new results can be measured very precisely. In the short term, therefore, many U.S. scientists are nervous about the prospective ban, and the Charles River Breeding Laboratories in Wilmington, Mass., the largest such institution in the U.S., is being inundated with telephone inquiries about future supplies. (At the moment, there are about 1,300 of the imports in the U.S.) In the long run, despite the expense of breeding rhesuses in captivity, the Indian ban can be overcome.
Biologies already has four rhesus breeding centers; the National Institutes of Health has five; the Charles River Breeding Laboratories has a colony on Key Lois in Florida and is planning another near by; Lederle has its own near Alice, Texas. The question is, how long will it take the U.S. to produce an adequate supply of home-grown rhesuses? Best estimate: five to ten years. -