Archive Interview - Dr. Roger Fouts
 Since
the 1960's, Dr. Roger Fouts has been a pioneer in developing
a way to communicate with chimpanzees, our closest animal
relatives, through the use of sign language. This groundbreaking
achievement has caused humans to question their treatment
of other species who obviously have the ability to feel
and suffer as we do.
He has written a wonderful, moving book, "Next Of Kin,"
that he describes as "30 years with a chimpanzee --Washoe--
and what she's taught me about us--not only our good points
but also our darker side as well." Cool Green World talked
with Roger Fouts about his past work and his present efforts
to save our "next of kin"...... ...
CGW: When, and how, did you become involved with chimpanzees?
RF: I became involved in 1967..and "how" is an unusual
circumstance. I was a graduate student and had been married
almost 3 years and Debbie and I had our first son, Josh,
who was 4 months old. I wanted to do clinical work with
children in psychology, and applied to several of the top
clinical schools around the country in my naiveté! My professor
suggested applying to general experimental because with
clinical there are often four hundred applicants for one
position. He suggested the University of Nevada and I applied
there and was accepted, but didn't have an assistantship
which meant out-of-state tuition. This meant we were probably
facing starvation or the alternative would be rather than
a Ph.D. plumbing was the other option! So, I called the
Chair and said I was willing to do anything if I could just
get the out-of-state tuition waived. He called back and
said: "There's a couple [the Gardeners] who are raising
a chimpanzee in their home as if she's a deaf child. She's
acquiring sign language and they're looking for some students."
Being a social psychologist, he was less amazed by the fact
that she was acquiring signs than by the fact that she would
actually take her doll, go to the plastic bathtub where
she was given her baths, and would give her doll baths in
that. He was amazed that a chimpanzee could do this imitative
play behavior--this imaginative play behavior which showed
imagination and several cognitive things that we weren't
aware of. I said: "I'll take it!" and he said: "I'm sorry
I can't give it to you. You have to come up to be interviewed
by Dr. Gardener."
So we drove up to Reno and I met Dr. Gardener and had my
interview on a Sunday as we strolled around campus. Basically,
I did not do well. Number one--when he found out about my
clinical background, my interest in child clinical, I lost
several points right off the bat there. He is an experimental
psychologist and experimental psychologists are not interested
in anything they can't measure, objectify, quantify etc.
and, of course, in clinical psychology we deal with feelings,
emotions, all those things that are beyond objective measure,
and I really messed up. I knew the University was having
a philosophical psych program so I told Allen Gardener that
I'd really like to take a course in the philosophy of science
and he said--I can still hear the words today-- "Good! If
you're influenced at all, it will show you weren't worth
anything to begin with!" With that I knew it was all over.
It was plumbing for me rather than a Ph.D.
 Then
he said: "Well, Washoe's on campus today. At least we can
go by and you can see her." I was not above accepting that
consolation prize, so we walked over to a nursery area.
This was an area where the Home Ec department had children,
kindergartners they cared for and worked with, during the
week and Washoe had use of it on Sundays. It was a large
yard with swings and so on and I could see about 100 feet
across to these two people sitting there and it looked like
a small child next to them. When we came up to the fence,
the small child spotted us and came running quadripedially
across the grass--that's knuckle running--at which the human
child illusion disappeared and the chimp reality appeared!
There was about a 4-foot fence between us and, when she
reached the fence, without a missing a beat she jumped over
the fence and into my arms rather than her surrogate father's!
And with that, they had to hire me. The Gardener's had always
said that, if Washoe was going to learn sign language, she
would not only have to have an interesting environment to
talk about, but good friends to talk with. And so I'm one
of the few PhD's that owes a great debt to the chimpanzee
selection committee that got me into the program!--so that's
how it all began.
CGW: When you were working with her what were the major
realizations you came to? What surprised you?
RF: I grew up on a farm and was friends with everything
from pigs to dogs to cats to cows and they all had personalities.
If you didn't know the personality, especially of the cows,
you could be in serious trouble! Now, when I got to university
I learned that what I was doing as a child was "anthropomorphism"
which was a "dirty word". I then learned that the animals
weren't so much friends as machines and got the Cartesian
line, which is still actively taught. They don't think;
they don't feel and, of course, by implication they don't
suffer. Descartes, the philosopher who started this trend
in terms of the objectification of our fellow beings, once
said that a dog that yelps when it's kicked suffers no more
than a bell that rings when it's struck. So, I came into
that world as a farm boy thinking my professors walked two
feet off the ground suddenly realizing that I was special.
I was outside of nature because I could think and so on.
And that arrogance is something that I think we all readily
succumb to, because it appeals to our vanity. Basically,
Descartes looked out at upper-class white European males
and said: "You're special" and they said: "This guy's brilliant!"
And they haven't gotten over it yet. They still are buying
this line.
Washoe introduced me to Darwin with a vengeance. She did
not tolerate that dark-ages, mysticism, superstitious world-view
of Descartes for one minute. She was saying I'm here, you're
here and you're going to deal with me. I thought that was
chimpanzee at the time, which again was a naiveté. That
was not, that was her--she's a very amazing person. She's
got tremendous self-esteem. She's got tremendous compassion.
She's not going to tolerate anything willful and so, as
a result, she wouldn't let me get away with it and she took
me back to the child again. It took a willful chimpanzee
to let me know that, granted I'm unique and humans are unique,
but guess what, so are chimpanzees and so are dogs and so
are cats and so are the rest of them.
CGW: What are the issues faced by chimpanzees now that
compel you to speak out?
RF: Well Washoe taught me that she was a person, without
question. She felt; she suffered; she was compassionate.
She was sometimes very difficult to take, and she was just
like a sister. That black and white dichotomy of Descartes
turned into a very gray fuzzy area very, very quickly. Over
the years, I met several chimpanzees--all of them different,
all of them unique, all with their own personalities, all
of them capable of the same suffering and intellectual awareness
of the world and joy that we have. And then, with Jane Goodall
and others, we not only found out about the cognity but
we began to discover the "people," if you will, in that
these are individuals. When Goodall first studied, we thought
that was chimpanzee behavior. Now we know that all that
she was describing really were the chimpanzees of Gombe:
the termite fishing, the ant wands and so on. We know that
that's one technological tool kit. Other chimpanzees in
different cultures use different tools: the nut smashers
have the hammer and anvil technology in the Thai forest;
some chimpanzees medicate themselves and others don't, and
so on. There's a plethora of tool use going all the way
from those to some of the more recent ones, like using bark
slippers to walk on thorny things so they don't get their
feet stuck--amazing things. And then also, ironically, you
know Washoe acquired sign language and another thing that
we now know is that chimpanzees gesture naturally in the
wild. Not only do they do that, but they actually have gestural
dialects. If you studied any anthropology, avoiding the
ethnocentrism that anthropology tries to teach, and basically
say we have to take the people on their terms and not try
to force them into our Western values--we suddenly realize
what we have in wild chimpanzees are people who are living
in a small community, a foraging subsistence culture. And
guess what--we spent 5 million years there ourselves. Agriculture
only came along between 9 and 12 thousand years ago, and
that's no time geologically. So, if you will, they are us.
And then biologically, if you move away from the behavior
and just stay with the biology, the chimpanzee is 98.4%
"us" in terms of genetics. We are closer to the chimpanzee
than they are to the gorilla. We are closer to the chimpanzee
than the African elephant is to the Indian elephant. They
are literally our next of kin at the species level. Blood-wise
it's 99.8%. In other words, 1/5 of 1% difference between
ourselves and chimps. If I took hemoglobin and put chimp
hemoglobin in your blood, your body would say "self". One
of the favorite examples that I've heard that illustrates
this point is: "Imagine you take your mother's hand and
your mother takes your grandmother's hand and your grandmother
takes her mother's hand and so on back down along the line.
Your ancestral grandmother at the point of 155 miles will
take the hand of one of Washoe's grandmothers......If you
turn to face your "cousin" you are facing Washoe."
The problem I have with all this evidence--biochemical,
behavioral, the wild data, the cultures going on over there--I
have a terrible problem with anybody that can walk up to
that line, arbitrarily break the hands of two of those grandmothers
and then turn to one and say: "OK! We're going to start
using you, even though you happen to be an endangered species.
We're going to use you for biomedical research so the ones
on this side, who happen to be overpopulated by the way,
can live a few weeks longer on the average lifespan. That's
absurdity! It's not only immoral but it's also irrational.
That is what I rail against and people call me an activist,
but I don't think so. I think I'm just trying to bring people
out of the Cartesian mysticism and into the world of Charles
Darwin. Granted he's only been around a little over a hundred
years, but, if we could just get them up to 1880, it would
be wonderful. Instead, they're back there with Descartes.
They can legally put fully adult chimpanzees in a 5 foot
by 5 foot by 7 foot cage, feed them, water them, put a ball
in to meet their "enrichment" requirements and leave them
there for their entire life--and a chimp can live to be
over 60. That is an abomination. There is no excuse for
that and yet it goes on--in this country we still let it
go on. They're treating them like hairy test tubes rather
than feeling, thinking individuals that are capable of suffering,
capable of all the joy and emotions that we are. Someday,
I predict that we will look back, our children, our descendants,
will look back, at this era with the same shame that we
look back on our slave period or with the embarrassment
that we've looked back on the Tuskeegee experiment using
Blacks, or the embarrassment that we've looked back with
treatment of the mentally retarded, or the abhorrence that
we've looked back at Nazi Germany, or the abhorrence that
we've looked back on what we've done to the American Indian.
It's the same evil. Human arrogance, whether it's aimed
towards Jews, Blacks, or the environment--snuffing out the
spotted owls so we can make a few bucks off lumber; killing
chimpanzees in the wild for bush meat, cutting down their
habitat for timber; poisoning lakes--it all is the same
evil. It's called human arrogance. People say: "I have the
right to do it because I'm special". We are special, but
so is everybody else. It's time that we got a grip on ourselves,
took off our blindfold, took the wax out of our ears and
stop pretending that we're the only solo violin in town
and sit down and join the orchestra. If you will, nature
is an orchestra of individuals all playing beautiful music
and if we'll harmonize with that we'll live a lot longer.
But, as the case is going now, we are on the road to destruction
and we're driving the train. And because of our arrogance
we refuse to see signs.
CGW: Do you think there is ever really a need to do
research on primates to further human medicine?
RF: It's a tradition. If you look at most of it, it's bad
research. I teach general psychology and any good scientist
will tell you you can only generalize from the population
you sample. So, if I look at college freshman at Central
Washington University, I cannot generalize my results to
college freshmen at University of Washington. They're different
schools; you're going to have different students. It's absurd
and what they say is: "We're using them because they're
similar." An example I heard, it's not mine but it's a nice
one, if I told you that in the next room here we have a
gas, we don't have any oxygen but we have a gas that's similar
to oxygen, would you walk into it? I don't think so. I once
heard the director of the University of Washington primate
center bragging about this: He said that 75% of the drug
testing and research that we do on monkeys transfers to
humans. I was aghast. When I was in school, and I teach
my students this too, I learned if you do something that
involves human welfare the alpha level, which apparently
he wasn't aware of, or that level of acceptance of a random
event, should be at the .001 level--1 time out of 10,000
should you be wrong. In fact, his level wouldn't even be
acceptable for testing light bulbs in terms of quality control--that's
at least 95%. And he's accepting something a little better
than flipping a coin. This is absurd. It's as if these people
have never studied any science.
And then what do they do? They put the chimps or the animals
in these tiny cages and when you put any animal--rat, chimp,
monkey--in a small cage one of the first things you're going
to get is a reduction in dentritic branching. The other
thing you're going to have is a deleterious effect on the
immunilogical system. That means that, if your study can
be affected by the nervous system or the immunilogical system,
you have a built-in confound so that the only people that
those results would be generalizable to would be to other
monkeys or chimps kept in small cages! This stuff is being
palmed off as science and what it is--it's a great waste
of money. If you look at HIV--they came out and started
screaming "animal model," like you would scream "fire" in
a theater, and everybody started pouring money into it.
In chimps alone our country, you and I--the taxpayers--spent
$32 million in the breeding program, not in the research
but in the breeding program alone. It turned out to be a
complete bust. I predicted that. I said: "What are you doing
using an endangered species for this? This is crazy! Why
are you doing this?" Even at that time we knew that AIDS
was operating at the intercellular level. It wasn't blood-borne,
so you should be taking that virus on its terms and study
it rather than this insane model. It didn't work. We now
have 200 chimpanzees that have been used in AIDS research.
They're not sure if it will appear in them or disappear
but now they're condemned to isolation.
Then, if you look at our achievements in fighting HIV for
our species--AZT, Protease--it all came through human trials.
You have people out there who know they are dying and out
of their compassion they're saying: "Please use me" and
the answer is "Oh, No!" You can't make as much money, right?
You won't be able to hire the animal techs to care for these
people. You won't be able to back-ward them after they're
done--and what happens to those people after the studies?
They go home to their families. What happens to chimps after
they've been used in HIV research? They get locked up in
a small cage and left. This is utterly insane.
CGW: So is it the money in animal research that is driving
it?
RF: I think you've got a combination. The money definitely.
You've got a major industry there that is not about to say
"Oh yeah, we're going to downsize." They're not going to
do it. And the other thing that pushes it is ignorance,
and then you not only have ignorance, but sometimes you
have studied ignorance where about research like mine, or
Jane Goodall's, they say "Oh, pooh, pooh! Those are just
vicious animals, what do they know." Then, when you combine
ignorance with human arrogance, it's my firm belief that
you end up with a lethal combination for everybody involved.
CGW: Are you working with Jane Goodall on the sanctuary
issue?
RF: I'm working with Jane Goodall on several things. One
thing, we're trying to convince the legislators about is
that, if they're going to do chimp research, what we're
asking is that, if somebody gets funded, that certain funds
be put aside for the chimp retirement so that they can be
resocialized and put back into social groups rather than
left in rotten little cages. The other thing I'm working
on is a standard for sanctuaries, if we can achieve that.
In other words, how should they be run, what should the
priorities be? Another thing I'm working on is the Air Force
chimps--the Air Force wants to divest themselves of 144
chimps. I'm working with Jane and others to put together
a proposal to submit to the Air Force to compete in the
bids against the biomedical companies and the government.
CGW: What stage is that at?
RF: The request for a proposal just came out and we have
to have the proposals in, I believe, by the first part of
February. We're expecting that the Coulston foundation will
also submit a proposal and also, very disturbing, the National
Academy of Sciences looked at the chimp problem and said:
"We think it's OK if we retire the ones we don't need any
more, but what we should really do is have the federal taxpayer
create a 1000 chimp reservoir in case another dangerous
disease comes down the road. We can then use those chimps
for that research and we promise not to breed any more chimps
for 5 years." They've specifically asked for the Air Force
chimps to go into that biomedical reservoir. So the Air
Force could turn them over to NIH in that case or it could
give them to Coulston. We're trying to put together enough
humane organizations to step forward and say: "We need a
sanctuary. We need a demonstration of how much we care." (1) Then, I'm also working on the Great Ape Legal Defense
project with the Animal Legal Defense Fund, which is trying
to put together some sort of legal precedent, a legal case,
that chimps can be protected more so that we can do simple
things like the Great Ape Project in terms of right to life:
You can't kill them; you can't torture them; and, if they
are in captivity, you have to treat them properly, taking
their species needs into consideration. If we can do that
in this country, that would be grand. The Great Ape Project
goes beyond that, it asks one more thing--leave them alone
in the wild too; don't mess with them over there. (2) So I'm
working on all those.
CGW: You hear people speak against the Great Ape Project
and try to ridicule it, probably out of ignorance, typically
saying things like you're trying to get voting rights for
gorillas....
RF: Yes, you hear these fools who speak out of arrogance
and ignorance saying things like "pretty soon they're going
to be picking up chimps in little yellow buses." I mean,
give me a break! If you're going to criticize at least have
the intelligence to know your enemy, if that is your enemy--maybe
you'll realize that they're not your enemy at all. These
people are like scientists in many fashions. I mean, we've
been doing sign language research for years and Noam Chomsky's
not going to change his mind. The way science changes is
that you have to wait until the old people, who hold the
old notions, die and hope that the new generation is a little
less egotistically involved in it! Who can expect Noam Chomsky
to say: "Oh isn't that wonderful? After pushing this theory
for 35 years, I find out it's dead wrong and Washoe's right!"
No, it's not in human nature to do that! We're facing the
same thing in the biomedical field. Some of those people
take the attitude that if we change now, if we improve things
for chimpanzees, then that means that what we've been doing
for the past 20 or 30 years is wrong--and that can't happen!
So, primate behavior starts playing another role, once again!
Of course, the animals lose when human arrogance is mixed
into that primate behavior.
CGW: And finally--where is Washoe?
RF: Where is Washoe--Washoe's at home! Debbie is taking
care of her. She's at Central Washington University--we
have an institute there called the Chimpanzee and Human
Communication institute. It's not great--it has about 5000
square foot outdoor area with 32 feet height. It's one of
the best facilities in the states and I wish it was the
standard for the worst. People say "this is great," but
I point out to them that it only goes up 32 feet. She can
only climb 32 feet. In the wild, they can climb 80 feet
and nest. They say: "But the terraces and the grass and
the swings and all this is great." I point out that a chimpanzee
in the wild can forage for 8 to 10 km in one day. Human
arrogance is not allowed in our building and we are, if
you will, the maid, the cook, the butler. If Loulis spits
on you or wants to treat you like a tree or a plant, you
have two choices. You can pretend it didn't happen or you
can leave because it's his home. If he wants to treat you
that way he can because he and Washoe and Moja and Tatu
and Dar, like the other 2000 chimps in this country, are
incarcerated without due process. They are not bank robbers,
they are not ax murderers and yet they're facing life imprisonment
without possibility of parole. We only do that to the most
heinous criminals. Even murderers get out on parole, and
these guys are facing a life sentence.
So, we try to do the best we can for Washoe. We limit the
program to about fifty undergraduate interns. They come
in and learn how to accept humility and to take things on
the chimps' terms. I have about ten graduate students right
now. We also have fifty docent volunteers to help us run
our various outreach programs--our educational programs
to get the word out to the public about their next of kin,
and Washoe is playing a major role in that. She's being
a Mom. She's 32 years old and she still takes care of this
family, even though the youngest Loulis--her adopted son
who acquired all of his signs from her--is 18. The year
before last on Memorial Day, the ROTC were out drilling
right behind our facility. Washoe ran out and checked it
out and then she gathered up these four adult members of
her family and she herded them into the little cave we have
in the outdoor area. Then she would sneak out and watch
these very dangerous primates with the noisy guns over there!
So, she's still got all the responsibility of being a mother
and she has to watch them, even though they're adults! So
she's doing great--she's still caring for those who need
caring. The first time I met her, I'm sure the reason she
jumped into my arms is that she saw somebody defeated. She
saw somebody that needed a hug and she gave me one. She's
still that way today.
You can learn more about Roger Fouts and his work at
his website. Go
there now!
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