Orang utan's cancer treatment similar to humans
Purchase this article for republication
Buy SPH photos
In this Sept 5, 2012 photo, Jungle Island volunteer Linda Jacobs comforts Peanut, one of the orangutans from a private zoo, as a group of medical professionals gather over the medical table for R-CHOP therapy, a combination of drugs used in chemotherapy to treat her aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma in Miami. Peanut is an 8-year-old orang utan and a star attraction at Miami's Jungle Island. -- PHOTO: AP
MIAMI (AP) - Peanut is an 8-year-old orang utan and a star attraction at Miami's Jungle Island. These days she's also got a team of cancer doctors huddling around her, watching as the chemo drip flows into her veins.
Peanut, who was diagnosed with non-Hogkin lymphoma, is not the first great ape to be treated for cancer like a human. An orang utan with advanced stage cancer at the National Zoo in Washington had surgery to remove a cancerous intestinal tumour in 2000.
In 2009, two female gorillas at the North Carolina Zoo underwent radiation therapy. All three cases involved much older apes, in their 30s or 40s, and all had to be euthanised.
But while other animals are treated with chemotherapy, it's not common among orang utans.
