NIH-Sanctioned Teams Repeatedly Cite Lab for Grave Infractions of NIH’s Own Animal Care Laws, Confirm NIH’s Illegal Funding, Oversight Failures

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WASHINGTON - Devastating inspections of The Coulston Foundation (TCF) conducted in 1998 and 2000 by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC) confirm TCF and the National Institutes of Health’s repeated violations of federal law, Animal Protection of New Mexico (APNM) and In Defense of Animals (IDA) charged today.

The groups released the reports yesterday at a press conference in Albuquerque attended by New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid, State Senator Mary Jane Garcia and activist/actress Ali MacGraw. The reports, obtained through a joint APNM/IDA Freedom of Information Act request, can be viewed in their entirety at http://www.vivisectioninfo.org/Coulston/tcfdocs.html.

"These scathing reports confirm that Coulston has been out of compliance with the NIH’s own animal care laws since at least February 1998, yet the NIH continues its illegal funding of this abysmal primate testing lab to this day," stated IDA Research Director Eric Kleiman. "Federal law requires that the NIH ‘shall suspend or revoke’ public funds to any facility that has continuing, uncorrected animal care violations. These reports are the very definition of that requirement, and lay bare the NIH’s blatantly illegal actions as well as its willful failure to provide the oversight mandated by federal law."

AAALAC is the only accrediting body recognized by the NIH, and uses as its main criterion the very same NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals that the NIH is supposed to use to enforce its own animal care laws. Compliance with those laws is required for receipt of NIH funds. AAALAC rejected TCF in both 1998 and 2000, based on fundamental, facility-wide Guide violations.

AAALAC was hand-picked by TCF to serve as the "External Review Team" (ERT) mandated by the August 24, 1999 consent decree between the lab and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to settle multiple violations of the Animal Welfare Act. The ERT was required to review the lab’s entire animal care program. TCF not only knew the exact dates the ERT was coming, but also claims on its web site that it had asked that the ERT be in the settlement because the lab disagreed with the USDA’s findings.

However, during its February 21-25, 2000 site visit, AAALAC confirmed the USDA’s unprecedented findings in a scathing indictment of both TCF and the NIH. In its April 28, 2000 report, AAALAC found gravely deficient veterinary care and staffing, and an essentially non functioning Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) – the very same violations it found during a February 24-25, 1998 site visit, also requested by Coulston. According to IDA and APNM, the situation in 2000 was actually worse, with less-experienced veterinarians, 100 per cent veterinary turnover, and lack of veterinary staff involvement in animal care. AAALAC even suggested that inadequate care may have contributed to the deaths of 17 chimpanzees between 1998 and 2000. It directly blamed the deaths of four chimpanzees on lack of proper veterinary care. Two died from suffocation during CAT scans, when no one was monitoring the anesthetized apes to ensure that their airways remained unobstructed. Two others suffered from renal failure and apparently received no medical treatment at all.

AAALAC has repeatedly documented Coulston IACUC violations, finding in 2000 that the IACUC’s actions "were suggestive of a committee that is poorly trained and discouraged from thoroughly reviewing issues and coming to its own conclusions and recommendations." Three years earlier, the USDA found similar fundamental problems (and has, continually, since then): "There appears to be a lack of understanding of the intent or purpose of the regulations regarding the IACUC’s function." This is especially disturbing because the NIH bases its entire "enforcement" regime on "institutional self-regulation," i.e., self-policing, through IACUCs. NIH has described IACUCs as "pivotal" in "ensuring the ethical and sensitive care and use of animals in research" and the "cornerstone of its approach to ensuring the highest standards for animal use." Without a functioning IACUC, TCF cannot comply with the NIH’s own animal welfare laws, and therefore cannot maintain its eligibility to receive federal funds.

"How could a lab fail so miserably – twice – when it hand-picks the inspectors and knows when they are coming?" asked Kleiman. "In the settlement, Coulston wanted its own inspection team, in an apparent attempt to discredit the USDA. Perhaps next time Coulston will be more careful what it wishes for."

Instead, AAALAC’s findings confirm the USDA’s. Since August 1997, the USDA has cited Coulston six times for failing to provide adequate veterinary care, and seven times for IACUC violations, all involving numerous chimpanzee deaths. In August 1999, the FDA also documented multiple IACUC and veterinary care violations. Proper veterinary care and IACUC functioning are cornerstones of compliance with all animal welfare laws – cornerstones that have "been turning to dust for years at Coulston while the NIH has stood idly by, watching chimpanzees continue to die," said Kleiman.

According to APNM and IDA, a May 19, 2000 NIH letter (available on the web at http://www.vivisectioninfo.org/Coulston/tcfdocs.html) exemplifies the agency’s malfeasance and failure to provide oversight as required by federal law, despite the overwhelming evidence of Coulston’s continued, uncorrected animal welfare violations. In this letter, the NIH’s "enforcement" arm, the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, wrote that, based on the ERT Report, the lab was in "serious noncompliance" with the NIH’s animal care laws. Instead of suspending or revoking the lab’s funding, as required by those same laws, OLAW instead maintained it, pending a review of all current grants and contracts. Astonishingly, OLAW directed Coulston's IACUC – which AAALAC had just found, again, to be in grave violation of the NIH’s own animal care laws, confirming USDA’s repeated citations – to conduct the review.

"At the NIH, ‘enforcement’ is on paper only," stated Kleiman. "These reports have shredded any pretense of legality in the NIH’s continued federal funding for this laboratory, and eviscerate the Congressional testimony of NIH officials last year regarding the agency’s ‘oversight’ of Coulston. They also show why the lives of the 600 chimpanzees and 300 monkeys at TCF are at extreme risk. We urge Congress and the public to read these reports in their entirety, because only the full reports show the extent and egregious nature of Coulston and the NIH’s violations of federal law."

"APNM and IDA demand that that the NIH immediately stop its illegal funding of Coulston, and that the USDA take over the lab and permanently retire its chimpanzees," concluded Kleiman. "These reports are devastating indictments, and we intend to use them as such."