30 
station program. Had the advice and recommendations of the groups of exper- 
ienced and outstanding research consultants been followed completely from the 
beginning, neither the present program of regional primate research centers 
nor the desired national primate research station (or "Institute") would have 
become established at all. It was essential that some decisions be made, based 
on other than scientific research reasoning; these were made by the staff of 
the National Heart Institute backed by the Heart Council's recommendations. 
It is a wonderful commentary on the high caliber of these individuals, holding 
such diverging viewpoints, who continued their collective efforts to bring 
this program into being. 
Three other events of special interest occurred in 1961. (1) The Heart Council 
(November meeting) recommended that the Southwest Foundation baboon colonies 
at San Antonio, Texas, and Darajani, Kenya, be partially supported by the Heart 
Institute until the Foundation had had time to demonstrate whether or not the 
baboon would continue to be useful in medical research. (2) The Council rec- 
ommended that a "tag" for a conditioning center be put upon a land area (gov- 
ernment property) in the Sacramento Valley near San Francisco. (3) The Council 
recommended that the word "regional" be used in the official titles of all the 
regional primate centers supported by this program. 
At their meeting of January 25-26, 1962, (25) members of the Primate Research 
Study Section were joined for a time by members of the Virus and Cancer Board 
of the National Cancer Institute to discuss the use of primates in virus and 
cancer research. Representatives of the Cancer Institute's Laboratory Animal 
Panel were also present. The Laboratory Animal Panel urged the establishment 
of a primate conditioning center, having formulated a resolution to this effect 
in December 1961. 
Also at this meeting the Study Section joined in executive session with Dr. 
Ralph Knutti, who had succeeded Dr. Watt as Director of the Heart Institute, 
Dr. Dale Lindsay, Chief of the Division of Research Grants, and Dr. Ernest M. 
Allen, Associate Director of the National Institutes of Health, to discuss the 
problems involved in establishing a Primate Conditioning Center at Davis, 
California. Somewhat earlier (December 15, 1961), Drs. Meyer, Knutti, Yeager, 
Eyestone, Price, and Allen had had a staff meeting(26) at which agreement was 
reached that efforts would be made to establish and finance a conditioning 
center for primates on what at that time was Federal Government property (about 
2,000 acres). It was possible that this land could be sold to the University 
of California. It was clearly understood that this would not constitute a 
phase-one move toward a primate research station, and that any research to be 
done would be on the procurement, transportation, care, breeding, etc., of 
primates. Information on this and on subsequent steps was provided the Study 
Section at its January 25th executive session. Approval had been obtained 
from the Director of NIH for a single university, the University of California, 
to serve as host institution. Conferences had been held with University 
