From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2006:

Ex-Ohio State University laboratory chimp dies on arrival at the Primarily Primates sanctuary

COLUMBUS, SAN ANTONIO--Kermit, 35, one of nine chimpanzees sent by Ohio State University to the Primarily Primates sanctuary in Leon Spring, Texas, died under sedation on March 2 as sanctuary staff tried to move him from a transport cage to larger holding quarters.

Ohio State has donated $324,000 to Primarily Primates to build permanent facilities for the chimps that will be about five times larger than their university housing, and to provide for their maintenance.

"Veterinarian Thomas Vice had administered a shot of anesthesia, followed by two smaller doses, when Kermit collapsed in
a sitting position," reported Kevin Kidder of the Columbus Dispatch, based on the account of Ohio State laboratory animal resources director William Yonushonis.

A necrospy done at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio found that the cause of death was a "heart
attack associated with pre-existing heart disease, pulmonary congestion and tissue swelling associated with handling. The necropsy did not address tranquilizers in Kermit's body," wrote Mike Lafferty of the Columbus Dispatch.

Yonushonis, also the senior lab animal veterinarian at Ohio State, personally toured and approved of Primarily Primates before agreeing to the transfer.

Temporarily restricted to a wheelchair due to injuries suffered in a recent fall from the roof of a chimp cage while retrieving misthrown treats, Primarily Primates director Wally Swett was at first unable to see what had happened, but told ANIMAL PEOPLE that veterinary personnel with extensive experience in sedating chimpanzees were right there and responded immediately.

The most obvious probable contributing factor to the death was that Kermit weighed nearly 300 pounds, about twice as much as he should have.

At Ohio State, Swett said, Kermit and the other chimps in his colony had no climbing structures. All were "flabby," Swett told
ANIMAL PEOPLE, but predicted based on past experience with retired laboratory chimps that they would rapidly shed pounds and gain muscle tone once able to climb at will.

Swett said Kermit was the first of the Ohio State chimps to be released from a transport cage, after the colony rested overnight
following a late arrival. Southwest Foundation vet staff were called to transfer the remaining eight chimps to their temporary facilities, and completed the moves without further incident.

The chimps reached Primarily Primates later than expected, Swett said, because researcher Sally Boysen and two supporters
chained themselves to the gate at the Ohio State chimp center.

Boysen had used the chimps since 1983 in a series of studies of their ability to learn basic spelling and math, and in studies of altruism and cooperation. Some of her work was shown in a Discovery Channel documentary.

"We have had an agreement with Boysen since 2002 that if adequate new research funding was not obtained to support the
colony," costing about $200,000 a year to maintain at Ohio State, "then the university would seek to move the animals to an appropriate refuge," said Ohio State senior vice president for research Robert
McGrath. "We delayed that move for nearly two years to allow for the researchers' efforts to secure such support."

Since 2002, Ohio State spokesperson Earle Holland added, "nine research proposals were submitted by the researchers to
traditional funding agencies, but all failed to win support."

Meanwhile, Holland indicated, conditions at the chimp colony had become dangerous."The current chimp facility was last refurbished in 1991, when the university housed only five animals in the building," Holland explained. "The current population," before the move to Primarily Primates, included "five males and four females, ranging in age from five to 47 years old," with a possible life expectancy of 60-70 years.

The oldest chimp, Sarah, on January 15 bit one of her female caretakers, who was trying to spray antiseptic on a bite
wound inflicted by another chimp.

Sarah, a svelte 80 pounds, "came to Ohio State in 1987 from the University of Pennsylvania," Associated Press reported. "She
has learned an artificial language system and understands the numbers zero through six."

With the advantage of hindsight, Swett had several ideas for moving chimpanzees from transport cages to living quarters without
sedation, but said sedation would not have been needed if the Ohio State University transport cage doors had been the same size as the doors of the cages used in the past to bring chimps from other venues.

PETA began attacking the transfer to Primarily Primates as soon as it was announced.PETA and the closely aligned Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine were already in conflict with Ohio State over a three-week "Spinal Cord Injury Techniques" summer course, started in 2004, that reportedly injures and kills about 270 rats and mice per year. Earlier, PETA and PCRM pressured Ohio State to halt methe-drine experiments on cats done by researcher Michael Podell. The experiments ended when the funding ran out in 2002. (poet note: see Cats-On-Meth for this story)

Swett and PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk have clashed for more than 15 years, beginning, Swett told ANIMAL PEOPLE, when he criticized PETA for killing many rescued animals instead of placing them at sanctuaries.

In a prepared statement, Swett added several days later, "We take a "no-kill" view of advocacy. In a fair world, primates
and all conscious individual animals would have a protected interest in living. We believe it is important to model that fair world
today. PETA takes a different view. The Virginia State Veterinarian reports that two animals died [of natural causes] in the
group's facilities this past year. PETA itself killed 1,946 pet animals, transferring or adopting out only 215. PETA also killed
141 wild animals in 2005, versus only 52 animals whom its employees transferred or released. These figures include only the deaths in PETA's home state over a one-year period. We work in the interest of allowing animals to live out their lives."

As on several past occasions, PETA amplified criticisms originating with employees whom Swett said were dismissed for cause.

Swett noted that among the storm of criticism he received after Kermit's death from primate activists, amplified by PETA,
Wild Animal Orphanage founder Carol Asvestas did not appear to be quoted. The Wild Animal Orphanage retirement colony for 20 former laboratory chimpanzees is also located just north of San Antonio.

Asvestas and Swett have often conflicted in the past, but Asvestas has had her own sedation mishaps. In April 2003 Asvestas
was severely injured by an escaped African lion, who ran over her, impaling her on a mesquite bush, after a tranquilizer dart failed to take immediate effect. Police then shot the lion. In 1999 Wild Animal Orphanage was penalized by the USDA for the August 1996 deaths of two tigers and a puma under sedation during a flight from Spokane en route to the sanctuary.

"Tranquilizing or sedating wild animals remains more an art and less of a science than any other part of veterinary practice,"
commented the late Franklin Loew, former dean of the Tufts University and Cornell University veterinary schools. Loew died in
April 2003.
--
Merritt Clifton
Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE
P.O. Box 960
Clinton, WA 98236