Manuel Elkin Patarroyo

In April 2016, Dr. Patarroyo was awarded the honorary doctorate from the Ricardo Palma University, in whose official ceremony there was a controversy against defenders of the biodiversity of Peruvian wildlife. Dr. Patarroyo, using in its clinical trials species of green-tailed monkeys Aotus nancymaae, using more than 4000 specimens, which returned to its wild state without spleen, deprived of immune system, reason why it was recriminated in the mentioned act . The ecologists supported their accusations based on allegations in SERFOR of Peru, for which the investigator had no response.

In November 2016 a Colombian journalistic investigation reveals the traffic and the environmental impact of Patarroyo's investigation

The vaccine candidate, first developed in 1987 in Colombia, was evaluated in clinical trials carried out by the WHO in Gambia, Tanzania and Thailand, and had mixed results. In 2009, a comprehensive Cochrane review assessed the SPf66 as being not efficacious in Africa and Asia, and as having a low but statistically significant efficacy of 28% in South America. Researchers and vaccine developers have been working on many approaches to bring forward the availability of a malaria vaccine." More research and clinical trials are required for a universal vaccine to be implemented.

Patarroyo started experimenting with animals since the decade of the 1980s, paying for wild monkeys captured in the Amazonian rainforest generating illegal traffic carried on by indigenous people who hunt the elusive monkeys for sale

Manuel Elkin Patarroyo Murillo (born November 3, 1946) is a Colombian Professor of Pathology and Immunology who made the world's first attempt to create a synthetic vaccine against the protozoal parasite Plasmodium falciparum, the cause of severe malaria, and responsible for the death of ~1.5 million people per year in tropical and subtropical regions, including parts of the Americas, Asia, and Africa.