Watchdog Organization Asks NIH To Stop $15 Million OHSU Primate Center Expansion

Demonstration at OHSU will protest the waste of federal stimulus funding and OHSU’s pattern of negligent care of monkeys

Portland, Ore. – In Defense of Animals (IDA) and other animal advocates will be outside the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) main hospital on Thursday, January 21, carrying signs with messages such as, “Expand your circle of compassion, not your primate center.” Activists will distribute information detailing OHSU’s request to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a new $15 million monkey facility at their Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC). IDA says this construction grant will not improve the lack of accountability, poor research quality and miserable living conditions at OHSU’s primate center.

What: Demonstration against OHSU’s proposed expansion of primate labs
When: Thursday, January 21, noon – 1 p.m.
Where: OHSU Main Campus, 3181 Southwest Sam Jackson Park Road, Portland

“A multi-million dollar grant should not be awarded to an institution which has been unmasked as a primate hell-hole by multiple whistleblowers, industry insiders, undercover abuse exposés, and USDA investigations,” said IDA’s Matt Rossell, who worked for two years as an OHSU primate technician. “These resources should be used to support infrastructure for modern, reliable research, not archaic and inhumane animal experiments.”

IDA is asking the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), which would fund the expansion, to fund their Clinical Research Centers and Biomedical Technology Research Centers instead. OHSU’s grant application will undergo a final review by the NCRR Advisory Council on Tuesday, January 26.

In a letter to NCRR’s director, Dr. Barbara Alving, IDA points to OHSU’s history of harsh criticism from both outside and within the research industry. Recent examples include a USDA-issued Official Warning to OHSU in December 2008, citing multiple violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, including “Failure to maintain a program of adequate veterinary care.” In September 2009, the biotech company InVivo Therapeutics sued OHSU for botching an experiment by withholding routine veterinary care – leading to bladder complications in all seven monkeys and euthanasia for four of them, not including two monkeys excluded because of a staph infection and a broken ankle.  InVivo abandoned the experiment when OHSU demanded $557,000 above the price agreed upon in the contract, and OHSU was keeping $200,000 worth of InVivo’s equipment in an attempt to coerce them into paying another $400,000. InVivo and OHSU settled out of court in December for an undisclosed sum.

The proposed expansion would include hospital, nursery, necropsy, and animal housing areas, with 216 new cages and 4 new group housing units. All of these would be used solely for Specific-Pathogen Free (or SPF) primates, and would be combined into one building called the SPF Animal Facility (SAF). According to their grant application, “The breeding colony requires clinical care and nursery support facilities to optimize colony health and maximize production to provide sufficient numbers of high quality SPF NHPs [Non-Human Primates] for research.”

“OHSU wants $15 million dollars to expand what amounts to a monkey factory farm at a time when world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall and other forward-thinking scientists are calling for the reduction and closure of primate labs,” said Tony Carr, who is also a former OHSU lab worker, now working for IDA. “After 50 years of wasted resources on animal experimentation at the Oregon Primate Center, the public and the animals deserve 21st-century science.”

IDA’s letter to the NCRR Director and OHSU’s grant application are available upon request.

Contact:  Matt Rossell, matt@idausa.org, 503-249-9996