UW decides on early closure of primate center

Philip Jason Ocampo
Daily Staff

By this time next year, there will be no more monkey business at Medical Lake.

The University announced yesterday it will close its Primate Field Station at Medical Lake on Oct. 1, resulting in the layoff of 60 UW employees and the displacement of roughly 1,200 to 1,500 primates.

The closing of the field station will allow the University to build a replacement station at Fort Lewis, according to officials.

"After evaluating the continuing maintenance requirements of the building, along with the need to concentrate efforts on constructing a new facility, we decided it was more feasible to accelerate the closure at Medical Lake," said William Morton, director of the Regional Primate Research Center, in a statement.

A troubled past preceded the announcement.

The station has been under scrutiny since five baboons died of exposure there last summer. After an investigation, the USDA fined the University $20,000 for violating the Animal Welfare Act.

Last December, UW AIDS researcher Che-Chung Tsai, who works at the facility, was cleared of charges he tampered with data.

In addition, the USDA is investigating the death of a macaque monkey of dehydration in November.

Robert Letscher, head of the Primate Field Station, said the closing of the facility is not due to the controversy around the primates' deaths.

"We have a very high quality animal care and use program over here," Letscher said, adding that mistakes will happen and that they "are only human."

However, he did cite the high costs of operating and maintaining the field station as the main reason for closing the facility.

"The Primate Center is being squeezed by the almighty dollar just as the University is," Letscher said. "Money is getting tighter and tighter."

According to Letscher, it costs approximately $2.2 million to operate the facility, which is a former hospital for the criminally insane. A large percentage of the cost goes toward housing the primates in an indoor facility.

"It is much more inexpensive to maintain the bulk of a breeding colony in an outdoor situation," Letscher said. The primates are kept indoors due to the severity of the climate.

The majority of the facility's 1,000 macaque monkeys will go to Tulane University in New Orleans, which has a climate much more hospitable than Eastern Washington.

Some of the monkeys will go to the Oregon Regional Primate Center, which conducts biohazard and AIDS-related research. The rest of the monkeys will go to the UW's primate headquarters at the Health-Sciences building.

Letscher said that while most of the researchers will relocate to Seattle, there is not enough money to keep them all.

"We've got some really talented, dedicated, highly-skilled employees that we're going to have to lay off," Letscher said, calling the situation regrettable.

The closing of the facility will allow the University to focus on building a new Primate Field Station at American Lake on the Fort Lewis Military Reservation.

The new facility is expected to open in late 1997 or early 1998.