Parkinson’s UK’s support for horrific experiments on monkeys

The funding will be provided through their drug development arm: ‘Virtual Biotech’ and the work will be in partnership with a drug company – Neurolixis – and King’s College London, which has a colony of marmoset monkeys. Parkinson’s UK stated on their website that the work would include ‘safety and efficacy testing in a marmoset model of Parkinson’s’.

Although there are no details of exactly what the monkeys will suffer, the usual way in which Parkinson’s is ‘modelled’ in marmosets is by giving them a series of injections of a chemical called MPTP. This is known to cause severely debilitating, distressing effects and Parkinson-like symptoms, including paralysis and total loss (or extreme slowness) of movement, rigidity, loss of vocalisation, lack of muscle movement including eye rigidity, lack of coordination, uncontrollable body tremors and a hunched posture.

We have previously reported how, at this stage, monkeys have been force-fed, over many days, with L-DOPA, a drug for Parkinson’s Disease, to induce symptoms of dyskinesia (uncontrollable body spasms, writhing and twisted body posture). Once these symptoms are present, a drug or some other intervention will typically be given to attempt to alleviate them.

The drug being tested was developed for L-DOPA–induced dyskinesia.