The Yerkes National Primate Research Center, originally established and located in Orange Park, Florida, and later relocated, in 1965, to Atlanta, Georgia, is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's primate research branch located at 201 Dowman Drive, Atlanta, Georgia[1], on the campus of Emory University. It is one—of eight national primate research centers funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The center, founded in 1930 by Robert Yerkes, the pioneering primatologist who specialized in comparative psychology, is a recognized leader for its biomedical and behavioral studies with nonhuman primates.
The Yerkes Main Station, located on 25 acres (100,000 m²) of the Emory campus in Atlanta, contains most of the center's biomedical research laboratories.
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The Yerkes Field Station, which houses 3,400 animals, specializes in behavioral studies of primate social groups, and is located 30 miles (50 km) north of Atlanta, on 117 acres (473,000 m²) of wooded land, off Webb Gin House Road, near Lawrenceville, Georgia.
Multidisciplinary medical research at the Yerkes research center is primarily aimed at development of vaccines and medical treatments. Research programs include cognitive development and decline, childhood visual defects, organ transplantation, the behavioral effects of hormone replacement therapy and social behaviors of primates. Yerkes researchers also are leading programs to better understand the aging process, pioneer organ transplant procedures and provide safer drugs to organ transplant recipients, determine the behavioral effects of hormone replacement therapy, prevent early onset vision disorders and shed light on human behavioral evolution. Researchers have had success creating transgenic rhesus macaque monkeys with Huntington's disease and hope to breed a second generation of macaques with the genetic disorder.[2]
The Living Links Center is a semi-free ranging primate research center at Yerkes National Primate Research Center. It is run by primatologist Frans De Waal and has two socially housed groups of capuchin monkeys and two socially housed groups of chimpanzees.[3]
Protests
Yerkes has long been the object of agitation and protest for its treatment of animals. This was especially true after the release of Frederick Wiseman's 1974 film Primate, which was shot at Yerkes and which revealed the uncaring, routinized treatment of animals undergoing painful physical procedures and even vivisection.
Yerkes' proposal to do AIDS-related research on endangered Sooty Mangabey monkeys drew opposition from numerous primatologists, including Jane Goodall.[4] In 2007 Yerkes was fined for unsanitary conditions and poor procedures leading to the death of a macaque monkey.
Beth Griffin Death
Yerkes Center Research Assistant, Beth Griffin,[5] became the first work-related death (December 10, 1997) in the center's history, due to complications from an extremely rare form of the Herpes B virus.[6] Griffin apparently became infected after urine-soaked feces were thrown into her eye by a primate, while helping to move a caged rhesus macaque at the Lawrenceville Field Station, in Gwinnett County, Georgia. An event in which OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, ultimately fined the center, in 1998, $105,300, after a 19-week investigation(OSHA).[7] The event leading to reforms in safety handling protocol of research primates. At first Griffin considered the exposure to be inconsequential, until developing conjunctivitis of the eye several days later, and dying another six weeks later after the initial time of the exposure.
Ep13 Disappearance
On June 15, 2011, at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center Field Station, in Gwinnett County, Georgia personnel determined that Ep13, a non-infected female rhesus macaque was missing[8][9] On August 16, 2011, the search for Ep13 ended.
| Name | From | To |
|---|---|---|
| Robert Yerkes | 1930 | 1941 |
| Karl Lashley | 1941 | 1958 |
| unknown | ? | ? |
| unknown | ? | ? |
| Geoffrey Bourne | 1962 | 1987 ? |
| Frederick (Fred) A. King[10] | 1987 ? | 1994 |
| Thomas R. Insel[11] (now director of NIMH) | 1994 | 2002 |
| Stuart Zola[12] | 2002 | present |
Henry Nissen was Director of Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Orange Park, Florida from 1955-1958. Can be referenced from "Portraits of Pioneer in Psychology Volume III by Donald A. Dewsbury.