Wisconsin National Primate Research Center Director Jon Levine has kindly allowed us to reproduce a piece previously posted in On Wisconsin.
Question and Answer with Wisconsin National Primate Research Center Director Jon Levine
Work flows from “the best of reasons,” says new director of primate research center.
Administering a big research center at the forefront of biomedical science is challenge enough. Running one with 1,500 monkeys is the test of a lifetime. But that is exactly the matchup for Jon Levine, the Northwestern University neuroscientist recruited to UW–Madison in late 2010 to run the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center (WNPRC). For Levine, leading one of the nation’s eight national primate centers is an opportunity to promote the kind of science that led to human embryonic stem cells and remains our best hope for beating diseases such as Parkinson’s and AIDS. At the same time, the center is a magnet for controversy, as the use of monkeys in biomedical research is contentious.
Q: Many people hear about the Primate Center only when there is an issue — or a perceived issue. If there is one thing people should know about the center, what would that be?
A: That researchers and staff are passionate about their work, and that they are wonderful, caring people committed to advancing the cause of human and animal health. The average person knows very well the suffering a family member or friend may endure in disease or injury; unfortunately, few are aware of the importance of biomedical research with non-human primates in developing therapies and strategies for preventing these conditions. I want everyone to know why we do what we do — because we are deeply committed to bringing about a future in which HIV can be prevented, the ravages of Parkinson’s disease can be stalled or reversed, and infertility, complications of pregnancy, and metabolic diseases such as diabetes can be successfully treated.
Q: What do you tell someone — a child, for example — who asks you about the use of monkeys for biomedical research?
A: That we are the good guys. We play by the strictest of rules, intended to ensure the humane and careful utilization of a precious resource. And we have the best of reasons for the work we do. I do not hesitate to give children an explanation in terms they can appreciate. For example, many kids know someone who has been diagnosed with some form of leukemia. We are developing methods to take blood cells from cancer patients and reprogram them into “induced pluripotent stem cells” — make them younger versions of themselves, before they became cancerous. Those induced cells can lead us to an understanding of how blood cells become cancer cells and how we might better treat leukemia.
Q: What do you think we can look forward to in the way of scientific advances from the center in the next few years?
A: I could fill pages with advances I hope will be realized. I’ll mention one that I think could enable progress in many others: transgenesis. The ability to induce, block, or alter the expression of specific genes in the mouse is now routine and has made it the standard for most studies of the genetic mechanisms underlying human disease. However, there are many aspects of human physiology and disease that can only be faithfully reproduced in non-human primates. We are undertaking new approaches to manipulate gene expression in non-human primates. We hope to target genes involved in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, and developmental disorders such as autism.
- Rhesus Monkeys are used to try to find treatments for illnesses like Parkinson’s
Q: What will be the greatest challenge for the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center over the next decade?
A: The major challenge for federally funded research institutions is to sustain funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other sources, especially through times of austerity, flat budgets, and increasing costs. I’m confident, however, that the talented researchers and staff at the WNPRC will keep us positioned to renew our base grant funding from the NIH. I am also certain that researchers who use non-human primates on campus will continue to successfully compete for individual research funding. Nevertheless, given the special costs of research with monkeys, and the preciousness of the resource, we will be looking at new sources of support. Over the longer term, the center’s biggest challenge will be to replace and/or renovate portions of our infrastructure. My vision for a new WNPRC building complex may have to wait until the economy recovers over the next few years — but it is a goal that I hope we can realize.
Article reprinted with permission from Jon Levine and On Wisconsin http://onwisconsin.uwalumni.com/departments/qa/jon-levine/
Photos courtesy of WNPRC
I know people that use animals in research can be nice. But they are cruel. I work in research, in an area that does use animals; I dont. It is generally bad science. It is generally not useful science. In fact I would say its often not science at all. Use of animals in research is simply wrong. It MUST be stopped now. There is NO justification for it.
What area of research do you work on Chris?
A freind of mine was a janitor in a lab full of monkeys. He said that whe he entered the lab all the monkeys would scream, it was deafing. It doesn’t really matter how strict the rules are if that are loopholes for not using them left up to the person conducting the study. Let’s be honest, the rules call for things like LD50 tests, give a population a dose until 50% are dead, then kill the other 50% and see what happened. That is not humane, even if you play by the rules.
Firstly LD50 tests are generally being phased out. Secondly, the test is done on mice not monkeys. Thirdly, what loopholes?
It’s true that the LD50 has been almost totally (possibly totally by now) replaced in the UK Tom, but the EPA still occasionally requires LD50 tests to be done using primates in the USA, though it’s much more common to use aniamls such as rats, quail, fish, insects (environmental toxicity to domestic and wild animals is an important issue to a concern as well as toxicity to humans) . The LD50 test is gradually being phased out in the USA and replaced with tests such as the up-and-down test.
Firstly, so they are not phased out.
Secondly, maybe at your lab,http://www.animalexperimentspictures.com/photo/642
Thirdly, the loophole where the tech feels the treatment for say pain could skew the results of the test, not the only example.
Testing is cruel by nature. Your creating a condition or fault that did not exist.
John has clarified the point above on LD50s.
With regards to loopholes. It’s not a loophole – if the researcher does not want to use anaesthetics that will have to passed and justified by an IACUC (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee – which includes a veterinarian). So there are regulations to ensure this is pain relief is given wherever possible (and needed).
Not providing appropriate anaesthesia or analgesia would only be allowed when it is pain itself that is being studied, and even then there would be a thorough evaluation of the pain/discomfort involved. For example many pain studies evaluate if an animal’s curiosity is enough to overcome the discomfort of walking on a heated plate (or other uncomfortable surface), if the control animals were given analgesia that would invalidate the results. The animal can avoid pain or discomfort by not walking on the heated plate.
Interestingly in some cases brain operations are performed under general anaesthesia in animals that are usually undertaken under a local in humans, implantation of electrodes in the brain being a good example. In humans the feedback the patient can give outweighs the discomfort, and of course a surgeon can explain to the human patient what’s happening as they saw open their head!
Legally there is no loophole, that does little for the animal in pain. Let’s not muddy the water, if anyone else was treat an animal like it is in research, they would be arrested.
30 second search revealed this.
This is part of researchers problem, a lack of truth.Please notice the 12th line, Oral LD50, MONKEY.
1 Toxicological information
· Acute toxicity:
LD/LC50 values that are relevant for classification:
100-51-6 benzyl alcohol
Oral: LD50: 1230 mg/kg (rat)
Dermal: LD50: 2000 mg/kg (rabbit)
Inhalative: LD 50: 1000ppm (rat)
Ivermectin is a mixture of 90% or more of 5-0-demethyl-22,23-
dihydroavermectin Ala (component H2Bla) and 10% or less of 5-0-
demethyl-25-de(1-methylpropyl)-22,23-dihydro-25-(1-methylethyl)
avermectin Ala (component H2Blb).
Oral: LD50: 24 mg/kg (Rhesus monkey)
LD50: 25 mg/kg (mouse)
LD50: 50 mg/kg (rat)
LD50: 80 mg/kg (dog)
Dermal: LD50: 406 mg/kg (rabbit)
LD50: >660 mg/kg (rat)
Inhalative: LD 50: >5.11 mg/l (rat)
· Primary irritant effect:
· on the skin: No irritating effect known.
· on the eye: Irritating effect.
· Sensitization: No sensitizing effects known.
And another 30 second search revealed that the studies referred to above were performed 27 years ago http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v27je03.htm when Ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug used widely in veterinary practice and also to treat some disease such as river blindness in humans, was evaluated in a range of species.
Actually the above summary isn’t quite right, as the LD50 was never determined in rhesus monkeys. The dose of 24mg/kg was the highest evaluated, and the toxicity with this does was mild and cleared within 48 hours.
Here are 291 more. Notice that the first search result is dated 2012.
http://google2.fda.gov/search?q=ld50+monkey&client=FDAgov&site=FDAgov&lr=&proxystylesheet=FDAgov&output=xml_no_dtd&getfields=*
Did you check your own search results? Having the word LD50 and monkey in the same article doesn’t mean they’re linked…
The first one references some LD50 tests done in 1993 (experiment reference: USAMRIID D93-16) – the experiment in the first (two) links aren’t to do with LD50s.
The next two links have nothing to do with LD50.
The one after that is a discussion about the first link (no more LD50 tests)
The next two links contain data about LD50 tests in mice (not monkeys).
I truely do hope that scientists like you are working towards improving the lives of lab animals. I also hope that your lower paid employees on off shifts are doing the same. However, what I suspect is, the guy cleaning off shift from the local temporary service could not care less.Who is going to catch him and if they do he can get another $9 an hour job. I see how poorly lower class workers are treated, like items to be used and replaced. Are you asking me accept that a monkey or any other animal in research is treated better? Far from it, they are company property, a test strip to be discarded when done. I also suspect that someone like Tom, a Director, has been very well schooled on what the “correct” answer is. As for me, I see these animals as someone not something. As such, keeping pressure on places like the WNPRC, works towards my goal of improving conditions for these animals. Lastly, if you really want trust, try to be more transparent. Maybe a view of the monkey room via a PC.
Jon, this is where you studied your trade way back in 1982 right? Maybe things were better then.
We’ve thoroughly debunked of the allegations of Peta before.