Front Page  obits  profiles

December 16, 2003

Frederick Coulston Dead at 89


The Associated Press
       ALAMOGORDO   —   Frederick Coulston, who helped develop or test treatments for malaria, hepatitis and AIDS in a decades-long career, has died.
    Coulston died Monday in Alamogordo, where he had operated the nonprofit Coulston Foundation, which used chimpanzees and other primates for medical research.
    Coulston turned 89 on Dec. 4.
    Funeral services were pending.
    Last year, Coulston turned over 288 chimpanzees and 90 monkeys from his research facility to the Florida-based Center for Captive Chimpanzee Care. He had been under fire for years by animal rights groups.
    Longtime friend Don McKinney said Tuesday he was saddened by Coulston's death.
    "Dr. Coulston was and remains actually, the last of the scientific giants from the early 20th century. He was one of the people who laid the groundwork for our medical research today," McKinney said.
    Coulston dedicated much of his career toward working on a vaccine for AIDS, and helped develop hepatitis vaccines.
    The son of German immigrant hat makers, Coulston was raised in New York City, where he showed an early interest in science. He enrolled in Syracuse University as a teenager, and began doing research as a freshman, he told The Associated Press in a 1997 interview.
    In the ensuing years, he directed laboratories around the country, chaired science committees and published international journals.
    He told the AP his finest achievement was his studies of the malaria parasite.
    The research began at Syracuse when Coulston discovered a stage of the malaria life cycle, which had previously been seen as an entirely different parasite. He proved his theory on a fellowship to the University of Chicago. That brought him to the attention of the military in World War II, and he worked on research to control malaria.
    After the war, Coulston worked in Delaware for E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., then directed two research institutes.
    He became director of Albany Medical College's Institute of Experimental Pathology and Toxicology in 1963. That year, he answered a request for proposals and was chosen to take over the Air Force's chimpanzees in Alamogordo.
    At one time, his foundation oversaw more than 1,300 primates at two facilities at the primate lab at Holloman Air Force Base and Coulston's own White Sands Research Inc. at Alamogordo.