E. I. GOLDSMITH 
315 
widely supported by the medical and 
lay community as a supplementary re- 
source to other medical facilities. 
7. The director of this laboratory should 
be a medical scientist whose research 
interest and experience with primates 
further qualify him for this post. 
In the ensuing years, the Laboratory for Ex- 
perimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates 
(LEMSIP) has grown into a research resource 
sponsored by the Associated Medical Schools 
of New York and New Jersey and administered 
by. New York University Medical Center. The 
experiences of our laboratory in organization, 
animal husbandry, disease control, and teaching 
have been published ^-'^^ and have led to the con- 
clusion that problems of husbandry, physical 
control, anesthesia, tranquilization, prevention 
of disease transmission, fluid and electrolyte 
balance and postoperative care have been solved, 
enabling one to make a choice of primate animal 
subject based solely on the scientific merit of 
the species to be used. 
High cost of experimentation with nonhuman 
primates has often been mentioned as a deter- 
rent to their use. In this context, it is true that 
the initial purchase price of most primate ani- 
mals is higher than that of a mongrel dog. 
However, in New York City and in other areas, 
mongrel dogs are no longer obtainable from hu- 
mane societies as they were in past years and 
the dollar outlay for purchase from dealers is 
steadily rising in response to demand for higher 
standards of care and housing. Animals bred 
specifically for experimentation and maintained 
until maturity already approach and exceed the 
cost of imported primates. 
The cost factor must be viewed in relation 
to the scientific productivity of the animal model 
and the value of wasted professional and tech- 
nical time in performing experiments which do 
not ultimately have applicability to man. This 
concept has been well accepted in the fields of 
immunology, infectious disease, reproduction, 
behavior and neurological research. In physio- 
logical and surgical experimentation the sim- 
ilarities between dog and man have been over- 
! emphasized and the differences have been 
overlooked. Nevertheless, those involved in the 
study of lung transplantation,^^ biliary tract 
and portal system ^-^^ have clearly stated the 
need to abandon the dog and to use the primate 
(baboon) accepting the fact that costs per ani- 
mal may be higher but that the cost for an en- 
tire study will be much lower and that more 
worthwhile information may be obtained. 
Finally with increased efficiency in the hus- 
bandry of baboons tending to reduce mainte- 
nance costs while the purchase price of dogs 
has been rising, the actual dollar gap is closing. 
In the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Cen- 
ter the per diem charge to investigators to house 
baboons is now $1.40 while dogs cost $1.75.^* 
The purchase price for a conditioned mature 
mongrel dog (wormed, vaccinated against hep- 
atitis and distemper and observed for two 
weeks) is $70. Fox hounds are obtainable for 
$200 and beagles may cost as much as $100. 
Young female baboons may be obtained for 
$130. The comparative cost is illustrated in 
Figure 1, which clearly shows that the expendi- 
ture becomes equal at one year and thereafter 
the baboon is actually cheaper. Thus for long 
term experiments the economic, as well as the 
scientific argument already favors the nonhu- 
man primate. 
We reported in 1969 the pattern of primate 
utilization as determined from the literature. 
During recent years at LEMSIP we have had 
surgical experience with 5 species and have 
observed their use by many investigators utiliz- 
ing different surgical procedures. A summary 
of the experience for a typical recent year is 
found in Table I. 
Surgery upon new world monkeys was limited 
to four testicular biopsies which were obtained 
for a phylogenetic study of spermatogenesis. 
The thyroid tumor removed from the gibbon 
was an anaplastic carcinoma discovered as an 
incidental finding on physical examination. The 
surgical experience with rhesus monkeys is re- 
lated almost entirely to our large reproduction, 
perinatal growth and development program. 
For several reasons reflecting cost structure and 
the previous experience of participating in- 
vestigators, the breeding females in the pro- 
gram are 45% baboons and 55% macaques. 
Thus the surgical experience with macaques re- 
lates largely to reproductive studies. 
