Community Review Board votes against public health care merger in Oregon after doctors group raises concerns about university’s primate research center

(Press-News.org) PORTLAND, Ore. — The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is lauding a Community Review Board after it voted unanimously on Monday to reject a merger between Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), which houses one of seven primate research centers left in the United States, and Legacy Health.

“Instead of showing a real focus on patient care and ethical behavior, OHSU has been wasting money on drug, alcohol, and sex experiments on monkeys, and the public knows it,” said Neal Barnard, MD, FACC, president and founder of the Physicians Committee. “More than 10,000 Oregonians have called for the primate center to close, and the Community Review Board has heard their concerns.”

A final decision on the merger will be made by the Oregon Health Authority’s Health Care Market Oversight Program, which was established by law in 2021 to review health care business deals and address the potential negative impacts of consolidation.

Citing OHSU’s long history of federal Animal Welfare Act violations and useless experiments, the Physicians Committee, a national nonprofit with 17,000 doctor members, has been calling for OHSU’s primate research facility to be closed before an anticipated takeover of Legacy Health.

Founded in 1962, the facility is located in Beaverton and houses more than 5,000 monkeys. Between 2014 and 2022, it violated the federal Animal Welfare Act more than 30 times. Records show that infant monkeys have been taken away from their mothers and used in experiments designed to make them afraid, pregnant monkeys have been injected with nicotine to damage their unborn babies, and in 2020, an employee scalded two monkeys to death in a washing system because he reportedly didn’t see them in the cage.

Ahead of the Physicians Committee's public push that began in March, Dr. Barnard wrote to OHA’s Community Review Board, asking that the board consider the federal administration’s intention to shrink federal research spending, as the primate center is currently funded by a National Institutes of Health grant, making it an enormous financial liability that could result in increased costs for patients.

In late March, Gov. Tina Kotek asked leaders at OHSU to figure out how to close its primate research center.

“Gov. Tina Kotek listened to the public and did the right thing, calling for OHSU to begin a humane and respectful closure process,” wrote Dr. Barnard in an op-ed published in The Oregonian on Sunday, April 6. “At Harvard, a 24-month closure plan completed certain research projects, provided staff retraining and made orderly transfers of the surviving monkeys to sanctuaries, zoos and other facilities. Harvard became stronger in the process. OHSU’s primate research center should do the same.”

In 2015, Harvard University closed its New England Primate Research Center after a consistent pattern of violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. University officials cited “limited resources” as a key factor when they announced the decision to shut down the facility.

Despite the Community Review Board's ruling in Oregon, the Physicians Committee filed a complaint today, April 8, with the Department of Government Efficiency over the years-long unnecessary, egregious, and abusive research occurring at the university’s primate research lab. In the letter, Physicians Committee experts detail five examples of research occurring at Oregon National Primate Research Center that is duplicative and/or could have ethically been performed in humans. Last week, a similar complaint was filed with the university’s president and board of directors. 

Over 85% of more than 2,000 respondents polled in September 2024 in a Physicians Committee/Morning Consult survey agreed that animal-based research should be phased out in support of superior methods that do not use animals.

In contrast to animal experimentation, modern and versatile human-relevant methods, such as tissue chips, organoids, computational modeling, and high-throughput screening, have proven effective in drug development and disease modeling.

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