Oregon Governor Joins Push to Close OHSU Research Center Housing Monkeys and Baboons Amid Animal Rights Uproar

Gov. Tina Kotek has added her voice to the yearslong advocacy of animal rights activists pressuring the Oregon Health & Science University to shut down its nationally renowned primate research center.

OHSU Primate Research & Testing Center Under Pressure To Close

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek’s office confirmed that she has directly advocated for OHSU leadership to complete current research obligations and move towards shuttering the Primate Research Center humanely and responsibly. The center houses monkeys and baboons.

Recently, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates against the use of animals for medical testing, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, has run TV, radio, and social media ads about alleged animal abuses at the primate facility as animal rights activists step up their pressure against state health regulators to require OHSU to shutter its primate research center as a condition for approving the Legacy Health acquisition in their public testimony in the Legacy Health hearing earlier this month.

The Physicians Committee also wrote a letter to state regulators alleging that the experiments undertaken at the primate center included exposing monkeys to heavy alcohol consumption and the process of electroejaculation after monkeys were fed THC to count male sperms.

In defense of its primate research center. OHSU said in a statement that studies on animals have led to:

• New “life-saving medical discoveries,” for example, vaccines and new treatments for heart disease and diabetes
• Breakthroughs in understanding Parkinson’s disease, depression, blindness, and infertility.

The center houses over 5,000 primates, and the closure of the research center could cost OHSU over $100 million and eliminate over 500 jobs.

Governor Kotek said in her statement, “OHSU should figure out how to close its primate research center, just like Harvard University did ten years ago.”