‘Quantum’ Leaps Into Biomedical Fray : Television: A script placing Sam Beckett in the body of a ‘70s laboratory chimp provokes supporters and opponents of animal research.

The animal-rights debate has pounced on “Quantum Leap.” Or is it vice versa?

NBC’s bold, provocative series is being pressured to alter a planned episode for fall in which hero Sam Beckett zooms back to the 1970s, where he inhabits the body of a research chimpanzee set to die or suffer severe injuries in a crash-impact test.

Beyond the extraordinary precedent of seeking to convey an animal’s emotional and intellectual characteristics, the episode would conform to the usual “Quantum Leap” practice of having Beckett (Scott Bakula) “leap” through time into the bodies of diverse figures. In the past, they’ve ranged from a beautiful woman experiencing sexism to an elderly Southern black man in the pre-civil rights period of the 1950s. And in the coming season Beckett will also enter the body of a Ku Klux Klan member.

But a research chimp? A brief TV Guide announcement of the episode last month waved a red flag, mobilizing the biomedical research crowd to action.

The lobbyists have organized a letter-writing campaign to “Quantum Leap” and NBC urging “balance.”

Led by the Foundation for Biomedical Research in Washington, they advocate vivisection and other use of animals in research they say benefits humankind. And although they’ve seen no drafts of “Quantum Leap” co-producer-writer Paul Brown’s script for the chimp episode, some already see the hour as a shadowy plot to gain sympathy for animals at the expense of research.

It’s “evident” that animal-rights groups are “deliberately setting up” the episode, charged Kenneth Gould, chief of the division of reproductive biology at Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta.

The episode is “a piece of propaganda for a small and fanatical group of people who are opposed to animal-based research,” wrote Portland, Ore., animal lab researcher James Parker to “Quantum Leap” executive producer Don Bellisario.

To which Bellisario replies: Take a flying leap.

“None of that is true,” he snapped. “This is not going to be a piece of propaganda.”

Bellisario vowed that he would insist the episode have “proper balance” and that “I’m not here to do an animal-rights show.”

It is bound to evoke more sympathy for the chimp than for the humans who strap it in. But indeed, there is no evidence at all to suggest that anyone in the animal-rights movement instigated the episode, even though TV Guide did quote co-executive producer Deborah Pratt as saying that “animal-rights people are in heaven” over the research chimp story.

“I have yet to talk to one animal activist who had even heard of the planned program till it was mentioned in TV Guide,” said Shirley McGreal, who heads the Summerville, S.C.-based International Primate Protection League. “I had never even heard of Paul Brown or ‘Quantum Leap’ till I saw the TV Guide article.”

Although Brown has spoken with numerous people with varying positions on the animal research issue--including Gould, McGreal and Jane Goodall, whose pioneering studies of chimps in the wild are famous worldwide--he says he alone originated the idea for the chimp episode.

“I was just looking for a story,” he said. “We’ve always talked about Sam being an animal or something unusual. We thought about him being a dog, but that would be a stretch. I thought a chimp would be the closest thing (to humans) he could leap to. Then the more I investigated, the more I realized the crisis these animals are in. We have a responsibility to not play it as a goofy story, a responsibility to have the first two acts be fun, but then show the horror.”

Although Bellisario says he has not approved a final draft of Brown’s script, the initial setting is said to be a benign lab where a scientist teaches sign language to a young male chimp occupied by Sam, who in turn teaches an infant chimp what he knows. The signing aspect of the plot is based on the work in cultural transmission of language that psychologist Roger Fouts is doing with chimps at Central Washington University in order to learn more about them.

The conflict reportedly comes when Sam takes the place of the infant chimp when the smaller animal is sold to a biomedical facility for use in a crash impact test that could be lethal.

The extreme, almost panicked response to the episode is, in effect, an acknowledgment by biomedical research advocates of the diverse animal-rights movement’s growing strength and ability to command attention and gain converts through education and publicity.

“As I understand the script,” said Fouts, who has been consulted by Brown, “it takes a chimp--who thinks and feels--and puts it in a crash test for seat belts and brain injury. Actually, there was much more invasive use of chimps in the 1970s, such as driving pistons through their heads without anesthetizing them.”

Critics of the episode fear that viewers will get the impression that such crash tests with chimps still go on today, when there is no recent evidence that they do. Bellisario promises the episode will note that crash tests now substitute dummies for chimps. But multitudes of lab animals do still suffer in various research projects whose applicability to humans is constantly being debated.

“I asked Mr. Brown why he was using the crash tests with chimpanzees and not using the (example of) chimpanzees in AIDS research, which is very topical,” said Jan Moor-Jankowski, director of the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates at the New York University Medical Center. “And he answered that he wanted to use a rather extreme example so that people in their living rooms would be sufficiently impressed to have a discussion, and that it would give impulse to deeper thoughts. Well, I think this is legitimate.”

McGreal claims that the biomedical researchers want to stifle deeper thoughts about animals.

“This program could inspire pity for animals that underwent such a horrific ordeal two decades ago that could translate to other situations,” she said. “That’s what they’re worried about.”

Fouts agrees. “They don’t want the public to know that animals have a point of view, but our research shows that they do,” he said. “The chimps we have think, they feel and they have opinions about things. We have good strong empirical data to support that.”

Although heading one of the world’s largest chimpanzee labs, Moor-Jankowski is one strong supporter of using animals in biomedical research who also supports what “Quantum Leap” is doing.

“We don’t need advocates like (the Foundation for Biomedical Research) that are trying to hinder the free flow of ideas,” he said. “I personally am not afraid that the impact of the (“Quantum Leap”) program will be such that my laboratory would suffer or my studies would be hampered. I think there is a much greater danger to having public discussion muzzled.”

Critics of the episode claim they don’t want muzzling, only fairness. “I have no objections to both sides being shown,” Gould said. “But given the choice of an animal-rights advertisement for an hour, I’d rather have the whole thing scrapped.”

Fat chance, if one takes Bellisario at his word.

“If I get pressure put on me from any group, my response is to go forward even harder,” he said. “The script is getting to the point where I find it very acceptable. I see no reason for this not to go on the air.”