The monkeys did not show any sign of being sedated, Dr. Goldberg said.
They might not mind so much if monkeys did not – so grotesquely – resemble human beings".
Dr. Franz said the studies of rhesus monkeys did not resolve the most pressing questions raised by the current outbreak.
It turns out the skinny monkeys did not live any longer than those kept at more normal weights.
Animal lovers may recall a similar case in which a tiger turned up late last year in Harlem, but unlike that big cat, officials said, the monkeys did not present a threat.
However, two of the nine monkeys did not respond to the vaccine and two more did not regain their fertility during the lifetime of the experiment, said Michael O'Rand of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
Rafael de Cabo, lead author of the diet study, published online on Wednesday in the journal Nature, said he was surprised and disappointed that the underfed monkeys did not live longer.
Though Mr. Forman defended his story, a friend, Marc Caputo, a reporter for The Palm Beach Post who accompanied Mr. Forman on the trip, said that the fisherman actually did not send his line flying up into the trees, that monkeys did not swarm around the fruit, that the fisherman did not succeed in catching any monkeys and no one cut any fishing lines.
"Feeding the toxin to monkeys caused them to develop the tangles and plaques seen in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease, but as the monkeys did not develop any clinical symptoms, we cannot say they would have developed the disease in full".
