On January 16, inspectors from an environmental agency in western Colombia made some troubling findings. At a U.S.-funded facility supposed to be doing cutting-edge malaria research, researchers were keeping dozens of monkeys in dirty cages in poorly ventilated, over-lit enclosures. Several animals were smeared with feces. Some looked sick, and one was missing an eye. A fetid smell hung in the air. On the floor of a cage, a baby monkey lay dead.
It wasn’t the first time Fundación Centro de Primates (FUCEP) had run afoul of local authorities. In 2021, inspectors had turned up signs of “animal abuse” at the facility, located a few miles from the city of Cali, and found no veterinarian on site. Perhaps more damning, the researchers in charge did not have the permits required to experiment on or keep lab animals.
But the problems may run even deeper. According to an 18-months investigation by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a U.S.-based animal-rights group, FUCEP’s parent organization, Caucaseco Scientific Research Consortium, apparently also conducted research in people without valid ethics approvals. These allegations have not previously been described in the media.
The consortium, which is run by Colombian husband-and-wife team Myriam Arévalo-Herrera and Sócrates Herrera, has received more than $17 million from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 2003, along with other international funding, according to PETA.
“We’re talking about this married couple and their three kids who handle this consortium that they are portraying as if it were, let’s say, like a university campus with several schools, like independent and all, but it’s all the same business, managed with the same people,” said Magnolia Martínez of PETA, who led the investigation.
A Google Maps aerial photo of the consortium’s self-described “campus” shows several buildings in a wooded area. One is a big house in a neat garden with a circular driveway, a swimming pool and some smaller structures. A former Caucaseco employee who spoke on condition of anonymity told Retraction Watch this was the residence of Herrera and Arévalo-Herrera. It was known as “la mansion,” the person said, and was usually off limits to the consortium’s staffers.
Neither Arévalo-Herrera nor Herrera responded to requests for comments.
NIH every year provides hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts or grants to foreign organizations for animal research. Although this funding comes with several requirements, such as meeting certain animal-welfare policies, NIH relies on self-reported information from award recipients to ensure compliance. According to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office:
NIH does not take steps, such as conducting site visits or requiring third-party verification, to ascertain the reliability of this information. As a result, NIH may be missing opportunities to identify and respond to possible instances of noncompliance with animal care and use standards at foreign research facilities.
In December, Martínez sent a letter to the NIH with a detailed summary of her findings. We reached out to the agency in March for comments and were told:
All animals used in NIH-funded research are protected by laws, regulations, and policies to ensure the greatest commitment to animal welfare. NIH takes very seriously all allegations of non-compliance and investigates every allegation. NIH has opened an investigation regarding the allegations sent by PETA. NIH does not comment on allegations while an investigation is underway. Information about OLAW’s compliance oversight procedures can be found at: https://olaw.nih.gov/sites/default/files/ComplianceOversightProc.pdf.
A criminal investigation by the Colombian attorney general into Herrera and Arévalo-Herrera’s activities is also underway. And the Colombian comptroller general said in a letter obtained by PETA that an audit of the government agency that funded the couple’s research for decades will take into account the “alleged irregularities” at FUCEP.
The debacle at Caucaseco has been covered extensively in Colombia, but has received only scant media attention in the United States. Many of PETA’s findings appear on its website, where the group has also published comprehensive documentation obtained through freedom-of-information requests to both public and private agencies in Colombia.
What has not received media attention until now is PETA’s allegation that at least two dozen scientific publications coauthored by the Colombian research duo could be affected by fraud. Martínez said the papers cite research approvals by ethics committees – institutional review boards (IRBs) and institutional animal care and use committees (IACUCs) – that don’t seem to exist.
The articles appear in several journals, including Nature Communications, Redox Biology, Vaccine, PLOS One, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases and others. Martínez said she contacted all the journals, describing her findings and highlighting the affected papers. In her emails, which Retraction Watch has seen, she wrote:
Among the multiple troubling findings that PETA’s investigation documented are the lack of properly established IRB and IACUC. According to the Colombian Ministry of Health and Social Protection, there are no records of IRBs operating within the organizations controlled by Herrera and Arévalo. Also, [the researchers] have failed to produce any records related to a propely [sic] established and functional IACUC. Other findings have to do with violations of Colombian animal welfare laws and other regulations; discrepancies between salaries reported to NIAID [National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] and salaries actually paid to staff involved in NIAID-funded activities; apparent illegal capture of Aotus monkeys; dubious incorporation and management practices; unsupported statements in Herrera’s NIAID grant applications; alleged failures to comply with biosafety standards that resulted in an employee being infected multiple times with the malaria parasite; and alleged lack of scientific integrity.
After PETA released its investigation, more ex-employees of Herrera and Arévalo have come forward with grave allegations such as how they were instructed to fill out blank informed consent forms in preparation for a potential audit and how in many cases it was impossible to know whose human samples they were handling since they lacked labels. According to these allegations, Herrera and Arévalo were not meeting basic standards of research with humans either.
Not all of the journals responded, although some promised to investigate.
Michael Davies, scientific integrity and ethics editor of Redox Biology, which in 2018 published a study coauthored by the Colombian researchers, told Martínez in an email on March 30 that the journal agreed “that this case is very serious”:
We have examined the paper that was published in Redox Biology and this does not appear to directly involve samples from the primate colony, but we take the comments regarding the alleged mishandled of human samples and manipulated data extremely seriously, and we would like to follow up on this aspect, as soon as we have more data on this aspect.
In a follow-up email the next day, Davies added that the IRB problem:
is a critical issue, but it is also one that we cannot easily assess on our own. So, as soon as you have any updates on this, please let us know, so that we can take the appropriate action.
Ripudaman Bains, team manager at Nature Communications, which published a clinical trial by the Colombian researchers last year, told Martínez in an email from April 17:
Following your original email, my colleagues and I (in consultation with the Springer Nature Research Integrity team) performed an extensive investigation into the concerns that you raised regarding the IRB approval for this study and, as is standard process in such instances, we raised these concerns with Dr Herrera and Dr Arévalo. We have established that the authors did acquire approval from Centro Internacional de Vacunas’.
We have also reviewed the study protocols relating to the published work and concluded that they were appropriately evaluated. As a result of our investigation, we will not be taking further action with respect to this paper.
Martínez shot back:
As I mentioned in my initial communication, there are no records of properly established and functional IRBs affiliated with the organizations controlled by Herrera and Arévalo, including Centro Internacional de Vacunas. Colombian officials confirmed this to PETA.
Bains then requested “the contact information for the Colombian officials” to “be able to liaise with them directly.”
Retraction Watch emailed the PLOS journals for comments, but we have not heard back. Springer Nature, the publisher of Nature Communications, said it was looking into the case.
A spokesperson for Elsevier, which publishes Vaccine and Redox Biology, told Retraction Watch:
We take these accusations seriously and are undertaking an in-depth investigation, but we cannot comment until the investigation is complete. If the allegations are upheld, we will take appropriate action.
On January 19, Colombian authorities suspended all primate research at Caucaseco. A month later, they rescued the facility’s 108 monkeys, which reportedly were in “very bad condition.” Following the confiscation in early April of 180 mice, “there are no animals left at Caucaseco,” Martínez said.
Meanwhile, among the many NIH grants that Herrera and Arévalo-Herrera have secured, at least one project, aiming to develop a malaria vaccine, is still ongoing – on paper at least. It has received nearly $1.75 million from the agency.
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Horrible story and fantastic work by Magnolia Martínez.
The lack of legal and regulatory harmonization and the apathy for proper oversight of international collaborations might result in a limbo that allows these kind of abuses to occur.
Are the “researchers” going to be accountable for anything?
This is appalling to say the very least. Why have these ‘so called Dr’s ‘ been allowed to practice these horrendous acts for oh so long on these poor defenseless God given animals for one thing??
The other is they most certainly need to be made accountable for their fraudulent cruel experiments and dishonesty its as simple as that. If not something really is amiss with the justice system in your country. All this while amazing wild life sanctuaries have to pick up the pieces of these poor broken monkeys and mice.