LEMSIP’S LAST STAND: MOOR-JANKOWSKI FIGHTS FOR CHIMPS
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1995:
STERLING FOREST, New York––One would think New York University
wouldn’t want to fight with Jan Moor-Jankowski. As a youth, he fought the Nazis in occu-
pied Poland. As a researcher, he’s battled disease for 30 years at his Laboratory for
Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP), widely considered the world’s
most advanced in primate care––and the most accessible to people who care about primates.
As a humanitarian, he was among the first researchers to adopt the principles of “reduction,
refinement, and replacement” as his laboratory policy toward animals. As editor of the pres-
tigious International Journal of Primatology, Moor-Jankowski from 1983 until 1991 battled
a libel suit filed by the Austrian pharmaceutical firm Immuno AG, in response to a letter-to-
the-editor authored by Shirley McGreal of the International Primate Protection League.
Paying expenses largely from his own pocket, Moor-Jankowski won landmark victories for
press freedom in the Supreme Court and New York Court of Appeals.
Yet despite Moor-Jankowski’s for-
midable reputation, NYU has moved to dis-
mantle LEMSIP in apparent retaliation for his
criticism of drug addiction experiments con
ducted by fellow NYU primate researcher
Ronald Wood. Moor-Jankowski in turn has
delayed his scheduled retirement for at least a
year to fight for the lives of the 225 chim-
panzees in LEMSIP custody.
Smouldering for months, the con-
flict erupted on August 16, 1994, when
Moor-Jankowski resigned from the
Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee
that oversees Wood’s work, in protest of what
he terms “highly reprehensible” conduct that
“must be stopped.” Moor-Jankowski isn’t
allowed to discuss details, under IACUC rules
of confidentiality, but according to the fal
1994 edition of the American SPCA magazine
Animal Watch, “NYU sources claim Wood’s
studies involve extreme negligence and animal
cruelty, and have prompted temporary sus-
pension of Wood’s experiments last spring,
the resignation of former NYU head veterinar-
ian Dr. Wendell Niemann, the firing of sever-
al people with direct knowledge of wrongdo-
ing possibly because of their ‘whistleblower’
status, and two federal investigations.”
Weeks later, Moor-Jankowski
recalls, “I was shocked to learn that NYU
intended to dispose of LEMSIP,” which he
founded in 1965 and had run under NYU aus-
pices since 1967. On August 23, 1994, NYU
had without Moor-Jankowski’s knowledge
informed the USDA, which enforces the
Animal Welfare Act, that LEMSIP was no
longer a “site of the NYU Medical Center.”
The import of that, Moor-Jankowski
explains, is that while he personally raises
LEMSIP’s annual budget of $4 million, mostly
from industry, “The money goes through NYU.
As soon as I started opposing Wood’s experi-
ments, the money was withheld, jeopardizing
our ability to meet USDA standards.”
Elaborates Suzanne Roy of In
Defense of Animals, “Moor-Jankowski had
arranged for over $450,000 in funds from the
U.S. Army to underwrite the establishment of a
chimpanzee retirement facility in South Texas.”
Also to house retired LEMSIP chimps, the
facility was to be run by the Buckshire
Corporation, whose president, Glen Wrigley,
rattled the research establishment by filing a
brief in support of Moor-Jankowski and
McGreal during the Immuno case. The contract
was to cover lifetime care for 12 chimps, all
over 30 years old, formerly used in military
experiments at the Delta Regional Primate
Center in Louisiana. Those projects ceased in
1991. Three of the chimps are now at the
Buckshire headquarters in Pennsyvlania, while
LEMSIP has five; four remain at Delta.
“But NYU wouldn’t sign the deal,”
Moor-Jankowski continues. “They wanted to
keep the money. And they wanted to fire me,
but they couldn’t, so they fired the lab.”
While Moor-Jankowski pursued the
transfer of LEMSIP to the Aaron Diamond
Foundation, a longtime sponsor, preparatory to
his own retirement, NYU associate dean David
Scotch “appears to have actively courted the
participation of Fred Coulston in a takeover
plan,” Wisconsin Regional Primate Center
librarian Larry Jacobsen charged in a February
9 posting on Primate-talk, an Internet bulletin
board for primatologists. University of
California at San Diego anthropologist Jim
Moore backed the posting on February 14 with
an extensive bibliography of sources.
Neither NYU representatives nor
Coulston have been willing to discuss the situa-
tion in detail with media.
Coulston
Coulston, 80, is owner of the White
Sands Research Center in Alamogordo, New
Mexico, and founder of the Coulston Found-
ation, sited at nearby Holloman Air Force Base,
which keeps 140 chimps left over or descended
from the NASA “space monkey” program of the
1950s and early 1960s. Since Coulston took
over the Holloman facility in June 1993, three
chimps died from overheating on October 31,
1993; four macaques died of bloat and vomit-
ing on June 14, 1994, their first day in outdoor
housing; two chimps died in July 1994, one of
apparent untreated pneumonia and meningitis,
the other of apparent oversedation for a routine
physical; and in December 1994, according to
Jacobsen, “An as yet unrevealed number of
monkeys died of thirst and dehydration in a
room where the water was shut off.”
A staffing ratio of one person per 33
primates, criticized by the National Institutes of
Health in a June 1994 site visit report, may
have contributed to the deaths. “The report also
notes that the Coulston
Foundation veterinary
staff is too small, largely
undertrained and inexpe-
rienced,” Jacobsen said.
Between his two
facilities, Coulston
already has about 540
Chimps and
800 macaques. He reportedly
offered NYU $1 million
for LEMSIP, the acquisi-
tion of which would give
him more than half the lab chimps in the U.S.
“This,” observed Jacobsen, “despite the fact
the Coulston’s enterprises in New Mexico are
marginal financially.”
At deadline, Moor-Jankowski hoped
criticism of a possible deal with Coulston from
other scientists might make NYU back off.
PETA
Meanwhile, according to Roy, “a
PETA undercover investigation has shown
Buckshire is in serious violation of the Animal
Welfare Act in both its chimpanzee housing
area, where conditions are at best bleak, and its
cat colony.” In February, the USDA cited
Buckshire for housing chimps in undersized
cages and failing to provide adequate medical
care––situations Moor-Jankowski attributes to
the NYU hold on the funding.
In mid-March, Army Medical
Research Acquisition Department director
Gregory Doyle ordered NYU to remove the
chimps from Buckshire.
In between, on February 24, Wrigley
offered to sell PETA all the chimps to which
Buckshire holds title. PETA refused the offer
on February 27. However, wrote PETA direc-
tor of research, investigations, and rescue
Mary Beth Sweetland, “We are always willing,
in conjunction with the Great Ape Project and
the Chimpanzee Rescue Centre [an English
s a n c t u a r y ] , to talk about a donative transfer.
Perhaps a condition under which Buckshire is
released from providing for the chimpanzees’
lifetime care would make such a transfer more
attractive to you.”
“We have 40 adult chimps,”
Buckshire spokesperson Sharon Hersh told
ANIMAL PEOPLE, “ranging from 13 to 35
years of age, who would be able to leave their
current situation for residence outside of the
research community. We have assigned costs
ranging from $12,000 to $18,000, depending
upon their breeding status. Many are ex-per-
forming chimps who had worked with trainers.
Some were part of a large group imported from
Africa for breeding in the late 1960s. Others
were born within the research community. We
would entertain selling specific animals.”
