American Notes TEXAS

It seems like a sensational deal. After a mere two or three years of work, retire on a pension that will finance decades of carefree living. Such a bargain is in fact available -- but only to chimpanzees. Some 80 chimps are involved in a research project in San Antonio in which they are injected with the AIDS virus; they develop some clinical symptoms but not the full disease and have every prospect of living out their normal life-span of 40 to 60 years. They are, however, useless for further research, and it seems imprudent to release the AIDS-infected primates, who were born in captivity, into the wild. So the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, which breeds the chimps and contracts them out to research organizations, charges customers $30,000 per animal to set up what amounts to a retirement plan to defray the cost of caring for the primates during their golden years. While subject to experiments, the chimps live alone in huts, but when their brief working lives are over, they are gathered into colonies of eight or ten in in-door-outdoor block houses that give them room to romp. Says foundation official Jorg Eichberg: "They lead a very normal life."