B.C. university says death of research monkeys unexpected

The deaths of four monkeys at the University of B.C., now under investigation by the B.C. SPCA, resulted from a small dose of a designer drug being tested in Parkinson’s disease research and was completely unexpected, the university says.

And that research was fully overseen by UBC’S Animal Care Committee, despite claims to the contrary by animal rights activists, the committee chair says.

STOP UBC Animal Research spokesperson Anne Birthistle said she was concerned UBC researcher Doris Doudet’s experiment did not receive full scrutiny by the ACC because it was a “pilot project.”

But ACC chair Marcel Bally said that Doudet’s work was not done as a pilot project.

UBC spokesperson Randy Schmidt said the committee reviewed the proposed research and the protocol for treatment of those animals. Committee members also conducted annual inspections of UBC’S animal research facilities.

As well, veterinarians paid monthly visits to each facility and were involved on-site during significant procedures.

Schmidt added that those veterinarians are required to report to the Animal Care Committee any breaches of the research’s protocol or any perceived abuse of the animals.

In addition, a national organization, the Canadian Council on Animal Care, inspects the entire animal research facility at three-year intervals.

CCAC spokesperson Pascal Belleau said assessments done by their organization at UBC are held by the university and it is up to the university to decide whether to release the files.

Requests to the university for to access them were denied.

A 2010 progress report by Doudet noted some of the 14 macaque monkeys in involved in her research were killed after six months or a year of experimentation.

In a paper to the Journal of Cerebral Blood

Flow and Metabolism, dated January 10, 2011, she described her experiment of injecting a chemical, called MPTP (methylphenyltetra-hydropyridine) “repeatedly, at varying intervals … until the appearance and maintenance of robust parkinsonian symptoms with varying degrees of severity.

“Four parkinsonian animals in Cohort A (one of two groups of lesioned monkeys in the experiment) were euthanized shortly after PET (positron emission tomography) imaging due to the severity of their motor disability,” she wrote. In response to questions from the Vancouver

Sun, Schmidt said Doudet replied that she received these four monkeys around 2006 specifically for this study and that this was the first time these four had been injected with the drug.

“She confirms they only received a very minor dose, and the severe reaction was completely unexpected. She wants to confirm that this was not a poison or a toxin … it was a form of a designer drug delivered in a very small dose,” Schmidt said in an emailed reply to questions.

“Veterinarians were involved immediately after the severe reaction. When the monkeys started to react, intensive care was provided (sedation, intravenous hydration, tube feeding).”

The SPCA began a formal investigation Monday into the Stop UBC Animal Research allegations of monkeys being subjected to unnecessary pain.