Live-In Monkeys

Helpers for the handicapped

Even when they live at home, quadriplegics and other severely paralyzed people often must rely on the costly services of attendants to help them with simple everyday chores. Now a young researcher at Tufts-New England Medical Center thinks she has found a cheaper, possibly better way: just as guide dogs serve as eyes for the blind, says Psychologist Mary Joan Willard, 28, so small trained monkeys can act as hands, arms and legs for the handicapped.

Willard conceived her novel idea while doing postdoctoral work under famed Behaviorist B.F. Skinner, who has managed such unlikely feats of animal training as teaching pigeons to play Ping Pong. Encouraged by Skinner, Willard decided to turn to primates as aides for the paralyzed because of the animals' grasping ability. She settled on capuchin monkeys. Only 1% ft. high, they have long been used by organ-grinders, are highly intelligent, far more malleable than larger monkeys, and can live up to 30 years.

With a $1,000 grant from the Tufts rehabilitation department, Willard purchased two laboratory-bred capuchins named Crystel and Tish, at a cost of $350 each. Willard spent nearly a year training them with Skinner's trial-and-reward techniques and finally felt ready to turn them over to two handicapped people. One was a Mystic, Conn., woman who worked with Tish for three months before the experiment was halted. The other was William Powell, 31, who has been paralyzed from the shoulders down, except for partial use of his right arm (though not his hand), since a motorcycle accident a decade ago.

In the six months that Crystel has lived with Powell, she has learned to feed him--albeit sloppily. On signals from Powell with a flashlight-pointer, she will also turn lights on and off, fetch such small articles as keys, books and slippers, open doors, place records on a stereo turntable and put things back in their places. Says Powell: "Crystel has her own personality, and she won't take any guff."

Willard concedes that only a few of the 38,000 quadriplegic Americans may want to live with a monkey, just as only about 5% of all bund people rely on guide dogs. But she believes a sufficient need exists for less costly live-in assistance. By summer, Willard hopes to obtain foundation funding so she can prepare more of the little organ-grinder monkeys as helpers for the handicapped. --

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