ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Science and/as Liability: The U.S. Air Force’s Chimpanzee Colony and the Politics of Controversial Science, 1958-1997

• In Event: Contested Sciences

English Abstract

In 1964, the U.S. Air Force transformed acres of land in Alamogordo, New Mexico to house a colony of chimpanzees. After acquiring these chimpanzees for research on the dangers of spaceflight, Air Force researchers invested in large laboratory facilities and worked to breed their experimental population. But by 1970, chimpanzees were no longer needed as models for humankind in space. Military research funding would not continue to support the costly laboratory and the Air Force began renting out its chimpanzees and facilities to university researchers. New Mexico State University hoped the chimpanzee lab would promote their institution as a hub of cutting-edge biomedical research. And yet, in the early 1990s, the costs of supporting the colony and animal rights criticism led NMSU to terminate their lease. In 1997, the Department of Defense divested itself from the chimpanzee colony, which became the property of a private toxicological company.

Through this chimpanzee colony, I consider the conditions under which formerly acceptable, or even exciting, science is transformed into liability. Extreme expense, poor public relations, shifting political climate, and legal problems radically altered laboratory chimpanzee research’s institutional palatability. In line with the conference’s theme of “Shifting Perspectives: Plural Worlds, Contested Sciences,” this paper considers the shift in institutional perspectives on what science is favorable to support. During our present moment in which the U.S. government has dramatically reduced its support for biomedical science and other scholarship, this paper considers the volatile cycles of research priorities and how science itself becomes a liability.

Author

• Brigid Prial, University of Pennsylvania