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On January 30 this year, the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia announced that a chimpanzee had developed AIDS, ten years after being infected with human HIV by Yerkes researchers. Only two weeks later, on February 13, Yerkes announced that the chimp, Jerom, has been put to death. The reason, according to Yerkes, was severe and untreatable anemia. Before Jerom died, another chimpanzee, Nathan, was injected with Jerom’s blood. Satya asked those who are concerned with the issues surrounding AIDS and medical research their opinions, and to comment on Jerom’s development of AIDS. An essay by Steven Simmons, who has AIDS, forms the core of this special report.

AIDS and Animal Research
By Steven Simmons

I am both an AIDS activist and an animal rights activist, two things which in my mind go quite well together. I also have AIDS myself, which makes it a very personal issue for me and has given me perspective on the many sides of these issues and how they fit together. It’s been my focus recently to attempt to bridge the gap that sometimes exists between the AIDS community and the animal rights community — a gap which is very unfortunate and has led to some conflict and real misrepresentation of the issues we’re all concerned with.

There was a recent Associated Press poll which showed that animal rights has really taken hold in the American conscience. The majority of people surveyed agreed that it is always wrong, for example, to kill animals for fur or to test cosmetics. Most even agreed with the statement that animals have basic rights and that they deserve equal consideration as humans. That’s a dramatic shift in opinion in the course of just a few years and represents inroads the movement has made. There remains, however, the issue of using animals for medical research, which we have been much less persuasive about. In fact, many of our allies or potential allies seem to steer clear of an animal rights position on this particular issue; even progressive social activists like those espousing gay rights, feminism, or environmental causes frequently part company from us here.

We’ve already established that people are concerned about unnecessary animal suffering and want it to be eliminated. Obviously, their support for animal research is based on compassion. They believe that using animals in this manner is alleviating more suffering than it’s causing and that there’s no other way. So, it’s really important when you’re debating this issue with someone to realize that people want to do what’s best and do the greatest good for the most number of beings involved.

I think one of the reasons that pro-animal research sentiment has remained so strong in the public mind is because those of us who oppose it are very often afraid to tackle this issue. To jump into the fray of this debate is to take on those Nobel prize-winning doctors and those eminent microbiologists who have lots of degrees and tell us that we don’t know what we’re talking about and that scientific progress depends on using animals. They use their status as experts to intimidate us and limit debate. The fact is you don’t need a Ph.D to discuss scientific issues or medical issues or to form opinions about them.

AIDS in the news
You’ve probably noticed in recent months that AIDS and animal research have been in the news quite a bit. First of all, last December, a man named Jeff Getty in San Francisco — who is suffering from AIDS — received a baboon bone marrow transplant. The idea behind this was that, since baboons who are infected with HIV don’t appear to develop AIDS, they must have some kind of inherent resistance to it. Since the bone marrow is a vital component of the immune system then, went the reasoning, perhaps giving this AIDS patient baboon bone marrow might create, in effect, a parallel immune system that would fight the virus. The second story that made the headlines in February was that scientists at Yerkes Primate Laboratory in Atlanta finally reported they had caused one and possibly two chimpanzees to develop AIDS. This was considered a breakthrough because for years they had attempted to infect chimpanzees in particular with the virus but none of them had actually become sick. According to the scientists, this would now bring us closer to an animal model of the disease that would further work in testing new treatments and vaccines.

For me what was more alarming than these two stories themselves was the general support this kind of research has been receiving from the AIDS community. In fact, when Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) came out opposing the baboon bone marrow transplant, the San Francisco chapter of the group AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT-UP) issued a press release attacking Dr. Neal Barnard (PCRM’s director) and PCRM. I was really quite shocked to hear this because, quite a few years ago, when I was working for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), I organized a series of protests at the University of Pittsburgh where a man had received a baboon liver transplant. A few days after the procedure a hospital employee revealed that this man, whose identity had been concealed by the hospital, was actually HIV+. When we learned of this, we contacted ACT-UP in Pittsburgh and they recognized this as a case of AIDS exploitation and joined us in the protest.

The case with Jeff Getty was quite different from the Pittsburgh one. Instead of concealing the patient’s identity, his doctors really held him up at news conferences and made him a media figure. Getty himself was a longtime AIDS activist in San Francisco who had fought very long and hard for improved access to medical treatments for AIDS patients. So when his doctors proposed this pioneering experiment with the baboon bone marrow, it fit in with his desire to be a renegade and push the envelope of science. Meanwhile, the scientific community was raising some very serious concerns about this procedure. Last summer, a conference was held by the Food and Drug Administration as they were considering the experiment. Experts in immunology who testified at the conference were in general agreement that this procedure was more likely to kill Getty than to help him. This opposition only added to Getty’s rising image as a hero to those living with AIDS and seemed to strengthen his determination that he was going to go ahead with it. In the end, it was really the emotional pleas of his family that led the FDA to give the green light.

It’s also important when discussing this issue to put it in a historical context. In this century about 35 animal to human transplants have been attempted — everything from pig kidneys to chimpanzee livers. Baboons have been the most recent source of organs for xenografts or cross-species transplantation. Not a single one of these procedures has ever been successful. In 1963, one person did live for about nine months after receiving a chimpanzee kidney, but most patients have died within a few hours or days. You may remember that, in 1984, Baby Fae made headlines. She was an infant who received a baboon’s heart and died about 20 days later. The first point to make is that they simply do not work and there’s no evidence they ever will.

Dangerous Transplants
Furthermore, xenografts are very dangerous and there’s a whole portion of the community that’s sounding an alarm about this topic. This is because of the fact that many microbes that are pathogenic in one kind of species are harmless in another, and vice versa. HIV itself probably originated in the Rhesus monkey where it apparently causes no immunodeficiency. Non-human primates we know carry many bacteria, viruses, and parasites which are harmful or even deadly to humans. Included among these are Y. pestis which is the bacteria which causes bubonic plague as well as the deadly Hantaa and Ebola viruses. So the fact that baboons are apparently resistant to HIV actually points to the greatest danger about the procedure rather than to its potential benefit. Through this kind of procedure, new illnesses may jump from the donor species to the human population and cause epidemics that we can’t even imagine.

Then there’s also the issue of resources. Each xenograft operation costs at least $300,000. That figure does not include the millions of dollars allocated to research in this area: it’s just for the operations themselves. Meanwhile, programs that we know save lives — such as AIDS prevention programs, housing, and primary care — go vastly underfunded. There are also many promising alternative treatments not receiving any exploration because there aren’t the resources available to study them. So each xenograft is really a cruel waste of money.

Finally, I think it’s important to look at the issue of informed consent when we have this kind of human experimentation. As with any hazardous medical procedure, Getty was required to sign an informed consent document before he received the baboon bone marrow. These documents state that you’re aware of the risks and also of the alternatives available. Interestingly, Getty himself told the New York Times, "I know this may kill me but I know I will die if I do nothing." Somehow he had been convinced that he had exhausted every other option and that this was his only hope. This is not unusual. In 1984, after the Baby Fae incident, an independent review panel determined that there were at least four other procedures that could have been tried to save that child’s life and that the parents were never informed of these. I think it’s really ludicrous for us to think that baboon bone marrow really represents the greatest hope for people with late-stage AIDS.

Jerom
As for the other issue of the chimpanzees developing AIDS, we have to question what this really means scientifically. According to the current criteria [see sidebar], that simply meant he was infected with the HIV virus (which we already knew) and that he was seriously immuno-compromised. We have to wonder if we are really surprised that a chimpanzee who has been living for at least a decade in a laboratory has a problem with his immune system and whether we are sure that that is because he’s infected with HIV. Of course there are hundreds of other chimpanzees who have been infected with the virus for over a decade who are not exhibiting any of the symptoms of AIDS.

What this brings us to is the conclusion that animals simply cannot model human disease. Research in recent years, particularly in the fields of psycho-neuro-immunology — which studies the interaction between mind and body — has shown us that human illness is a very dynamic process involving many factors. It’s been difficult enough simply to create a similar chemistry in animals that we observe in humans. But we will never be able to create the complex context in which this illness arises and progresses. The reason that researchers claim we need an animal model for this and other diseases is so they can test new treatments without risking human lives. Yet we know that more than half of the drugs approved every year — all of which have been through extensive animal testing for both toxicity and efficacy — are later pulled from the market because of unpredicted dangerous or even lethal side effects in humans.

Curing or Alleviating AIDS
The primary focus of AIDS activist groups has been to speed the process of drug approval in this country, and they’ve been very successful in doing that. But the most obvious way to accomplish this would be to eliminate the animal testing stage from the drug development process. Not only would this hasten the accessibility of new drugs but it would also free up millions of dollars of resources which could be directed into more effective channels.

Finally, most animal rights activists are in agreement about the ethics of this situation. It is simply wrong to use animals for research. While, therefore, I think it’s important that we argue on scientific grounds, there is still the basic ethical issue and I don’t think we should back away from stating our position on that. I stated in a recent editorial, that "even if xenografts, which are cross-species transplants, were actually safe, effective, and economically feasible, there would still remain the question of whether we have the right to kill non-human beings for human beings. I value my life no more than a baboon values his or hers. Fortunately, the facts do not force us to make such complicated ethical judgments. Respect for all life can only hasten scientific progress."

AIDS is a very emotionally charged issue. We’ve all seen ACT-UP protests, and people are angry and caught up in the emotion. That can be very intimidating in terms of challenging people on this issue. Of course, I too am very personally involved in it: I have many friends who are sick and I myself suffer from the disease. I want progress to be made more than anything. I want this disease to be cured or managed.

That is the point we have to stick to: we are on the same side. It is our respect for life and our compassion that has influenced us to have these positions on these issues. The fact is this is not saving lives. This is costing lives, and that is why it is wrong. Don’t ever let yourself be backed into the corner of "Your dog or the boy." It is simply not reality.

He suggests that readers write letters to the editor of your local papers. Tell them that these procedures are dangerous, wasteful, and cruel. Steven I. Simmons lives and works in Brooklyn.

 

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