PETA Statement: OHSU Monkey Dies After Experimental Brain Surgery

For Immediate Release:
January 20, 2021

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from Dr. Alka Chandna, PhD, PETA Vice President, Laboratory Investigations Cases, concerning recent U.S. Department of Agriculture violations at Oregon Health & Science University documenting that a marmoset had to be euthanized after being used in incompetently performed experimental brain surgery and being deprived of veterinary care for days:

The horror show of Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) continues to claim victims—and PETA is asking the government how many more animals must be tormented and killed in the school’s laboratories before it finally pulls the plug on this unending violence. According to a just-posted federal inspection report obtained by PETA, the university was cited for denying adequate veterinary care to a male marmoset who had to be euthanized after he developed an infection in his brain. Experimenters had cut into the animal’s skull improperly, causing scarring and abnormal bone growth at the incision site. Adding insult to this literal injury, the marmoset wasn’t examined by a veterinarian until four days after the problems were first observed, and treatment wasn’t administered until six days after that. A female marmoset had suffered a similar fate in 2020.

This disaster follows years of violations, including operating on the wrong monkey; running live monkeys through a mechanical, high-temperate cage washer; leaving a sponge inside an animal after surgery; allowing monkeys to escape; and providing inadequate veterinary care. Our government needs to pull the plug on the hundreds of millions of grant dollars that flow into OHSU every year and support human-relevant, non-animal research instead.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.