Dr. Patarroyo and his Experiments with Law
Manuel Elkin Patarroyo, Latin America’s most renowned scientist, faces a thorny dilemma. For decades, thousands of wild monkeys have been acquired clandestinely by his foundation to conduct experiments in his quest for a malaria vaccine. The case is now in the courts; the evidence is damning—but will it be enough to put behind bars the recipient of a Prince of Asturias Award?
Dr. Patarroyo greets a police officer at the facilities of his research center in Leticia.
Text by Carlos Suárez Álvarez. Photos by Thomas Heflon, Lina Marcela Peláez, Fundación Entrópika, Policía Nacional de Colombia.
Originally published in issue 162 of Cáñamo magazine, June 2011.
That morning the police seized two hundred monkeys. “They came in sacks, they were dying,” recalls the agent with a grimace of sadnes. He knows where they came from: “From Peru.” And where they were going: “Eehhh… To Patarroyo.” The police know it, the biologists know it, the indigenous people know it, the environmental authorities know it. Here in Leticia, in the Colombian Amazon, and in the Brazilian and Peruvian towns located at this triple border in the heart of the jungle, everyone knows that Manuel Patarroyo has been buying, at a good price, for at least twenty-five years, monkeys for biomedical experimentation in his still incomplete search for a malaria vaccine. Thanks to a complex network of native collectors and intermediaries, tens of thousands of night monkeys, Aotus nancymaae, have crossed the border illegally. From the freedom of the jungle to the torture of experimentation, probably death or, with luck, a traumatic release; and the money changing hands: it goes to the communities converted into some basic necessity.
But after decades of lack of control, Patarroyo’s luck may be changing. Biologist and conservationist Ángela Maldonado, who has worked in the region since 2003, is determined: “I said to myself: it’s time to act. We all knew, but no one wanted to take the initiative because Patarroyo is a sacred cow.” After gathering strong evidence, Maldonado has given new momentum to a judicial process that has been dragging on for years. If declared guilty, Patarroyo could go to prison, because this international trafficking of monkeys involves, according to the Colombian penal code, two crimes: illegal biomedical experimentation and illicit use of natural resources.
Only now has what among biologists working in the area had long been common knowledge become public. Already in November 2007, after an inspection by Corpoamazonía, the governmental agency responsible for enforcing environmental regulations, an official dared to denounce the obvious: “There were a total of 640 animals at the primate station, of which around 98% apparently correspond to Aotus nancymaae and the rest to Aotus vociferans.” The observation was actually an accusation: first, because the station was only authorized to experiment with Aotus vociferans; second, because the presence of nancymaae had not been reported in Colombia. The automatic question was: where had Patarroyo obtained the six hundred nancymaae? From Peru and Brazil, clandestinely, violating the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), ratified by Colombia, which requires permits to trade animals like the nancymaae, permits Patarroyo still lacks.
The Colombian biologist Ángela Maldonado, awarded with the prestigious Whitley Award in 2010 for her project to conserve night monkeys along the Amazonian border region of Peru, Colombia, and Brazil.
a peculiar investigation
Faced with the evidence, the Ministry of Environment had no choice but to open a very peculiar administrative investigation. Peculiar because the “evidence” used to close the case was provided by Patarroyo himself: it was enough for him to give his word that there were no nancymaae at the station. At the same time, perhaps to avoid future problems, he attached a scientific article in which he announced an unexpected finding: that on the Colombian side of the Amazon River there were also populations of nancymaae. This was enough for the Ministry, but the editors of the prestigious International Journal of Primatology, to which Patarroyo submitted the article seeking international scientific legitimacy, rejected it. “Given the weakness of the methodology and the lack of data, this manuscript does not provide convincing evidence that Aotus nancymaae exist in the area.” They also questioned the honesty of the authors, who had not explained how they conducted the work in eleven months. “As someone accustomed to fieldwork with primates, I simply do not consider it possible.”
The reason Patarroyo is interested in having the existence of nancymaae accepted in Colombia is because these monkeys (and not the vociferans, for which he does have permission) are the ones he uses in his experiments. Inexcusable, in the description of the methodology accompanying his renowned scientific articles, Patarroyo himself explains: “Aotus nancymaae monkeys from the Amazon basin, tattooed with their identification numbers and kept in a monkey colony in the city of Leticia, were used in this experiment.” And always: “The permit to use them has been granted by the competent Colombian authority, Corpoamazonía.” The first statement implies acknowledging the commission of a crime; the second is false.
In this image, from late September 2010, an employee at Patarroyo’s experimental station is carrying an Aotus nancymaae monkey, animals for which there is no experimentation permit.
evidences
But if more evidence of this illegal trafficking was needed, biologist Ángela Maldonado and her team of collaborators have dedicated three years to gathering it. Maldonado has uncovered a network of collectors and intermediaries from the three countries, and has described their methods, which are extraordinarily aggressive toward the ecosystem. At night, native collectors search for the monkeys as they come out to feed; they find them eating and follow them to their “nest” in the early morning hours. Once the tree is located, in daylight, the collectors cut down all the vegetation within an eight-meter radius, preventing the animals from escaping. Then a fishing net is set up around the tree, and one of the collectors climbs to the nest, making noise so the frightened monkeys come down seeking safety. They are then captured, taken to the communities, and kept captive until transported to Leticia, where up to thirty euros are charged per monkey.
The indigenous people, who don’t watch TV or read newspapers, know exactly who they work for. “Patarroyo,” they invariably reply. They have their reasons for engaging in this business: “Agriculture barely provides enough to buy a few things, but we need money from the monkeys to buy school supplies, uniforms for the children, and other things,” says a collector from the Peruvian side who has been involved for several years. For the past three years, they no longer sell directly; now everything is “legal”: the monkeys must go through Colombian intermediaries, duly accredited by Corpoamazonía to work, but only with vociferans.
It is this need for money that ensures a continuous flow of animals; this is where the conservation project led by Ángela Maldonado fits in. She was awarded the 2010 Whitley Award (known as the “Green Oscar”), endowed with sixty thousand pounds sterling, and presented by Princess Anne of England. “We want to offer productive alternatives in these communities so they are not forced to capture monkeys.” One such alternative is freeze-drying jungle fruits for marketing in Europe. “The challenge of conservation is that people receive economic rewards for developing ways of life that respect the environment.”
A Peruvian “collector” shows one of his captures, which he will sell to an intermediary. Final destination: Patarroyo’s experimental station in Leticia.
MONkeys under stress
One of Maldonado’s collaborators on this conservation project is Lina Marcela Peláez, who was the veterinarian at Patarroyo’s primate station between April 2004 and July 2005. Peláez speaks out against the silence surrounding the famous researcher: “People need to know the truth about that man,” she responds when asked about her work with Patarroyo. She emphasizes that the station primarily worked with nancymaae monkeys. “Fridays were the days animals arrived. Sometimes ten, twenty, thirty, even sixty or eighty would come…”
During the fifteen months she worked at the station, Peláez estimates that over two thousand monkeys arrived, even though the permit at the time allowed for the capture of 1,600 monkeys (of the vociferans species) over a two-year period. Her experience convinced Peláez that research with wild monkeys is “scientifically absurd.” She explains: “The animals arrived in good condition, but their state quickly worsened because confinement caused them great stress, which is known to alter the immune response, so the results of the trials could not be reliable.” The stress of capture and confinement, tattooing of identification numbers, punctures for blood analysis… The monkeys’ health had already deteriorated by the time they were inoculated with the vaccine and, later, with the malaria parasite. Given these factors, it is no surprise to the veterinarian that, after thirty years, Patarroyo has not yet found the much-anticipated vaccine.
Both Maldonado and Peláez understand the necessity of using animals in medical research, but believe Patarroyo violated basic ethical standards that are widely applied in laboratories worldwide. The first step should have been to set up a monkey breeding program. “To obtain several pairs and breed them in captivity,” Peláez explains. “Monkeys born this way are perfectly adapted to the conditions and don’t suffer the trauma that makes captured wild monkeys sick.” For Peláez, this approach prevents mistreatment of wild animals, and research results are more reliable. “That would be the just, legal, ethical, and scientific thing to do…” And more expensive, Maldonado adds: “For the lab, it is much cheaper to continue capturing wild animals than to set up a captive breeding program.”
This is how a night monkey looked after passing through Manuel Patarroyo’s experimental primate station. It shows a skin condition known as dermatophilosis, as well as muscle stiffness, likely caused by the stress of captivity. (Image provided by Lina Marcela Peláez).
The criminal process is currently in the investigation phase… and it might remain there. In June 2010, a prosecutor in Leticia suspended the case, claiming a lack of evidence for the presence of nancymaae monkeys at the station, despite the fact—worth repeating—that Patarroyo repeatedly acknowledges using this species in his scientific articles. However, Maldonado has provided additional evidence, including a genetic test commissioned by Corpoamazonía to researcher Manuel Ruiz from Universidad Javeriana, using blood samples supplied by the station itself, which confirmed the presence of nancymaae.
The evidence is numerous and conclusive, but Maldonado and Peláez fear that the influence of the eminent Patarroyo—Prince of Asturias awardee, friend of heads of state, national pride—may be enough to block the complaint. For this reason, Maldonado’s lawyer will file a “popular action,” a legal mechanism that protects collective rights; through this, not only will the investigator’s foundation be sued, but also the Ministry of Environment, the Environmental Attorney’s Office, and Corpoamazonía, the governmental entities responsible for overseeing activities at Patarroyo’s experimental station. “I don’t understand why he is being protected,” laments Peláez. “It seems that in this country we like idols.” Colombian justice now has a new opportunity to prove that here, the rule of law prevails.
