Bad, Worse, Worst: OHSU Ranked Among Animal Testing Offenders

PETA’s Interactive ‘Failed Tests’ Resource Calls Out School for Using Tens of Thousands of Animals in Cruel Experiments

For Immediate Release:
September 30, 2019

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

With the new school year underway at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), PETA is alerting students to its new interactive feature, “Failed Tests,” which ranks colleges as “bad,” “worse,” or “worst” for animals—and OHSU, which used nearly 5,000 monkeys in experiments last year and is home to the notorious Oregon National Primate Research Center—is among the “worst.”

OHSU received more than $245 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health in 2018, nearly half of which is estimated to have been directed toward experiments on animals, despite the school’s long history of carelessness and incompetence leading to multiple animal deaths. One monkey in an OHSU laboratory became trapped in PVC pipes and had to be euthanized, another slipped behind cages hung on a wall and died, and earlier this year, a ferret had to be euthanized following experimental brain surgery that caused him to experience “unexpected anatomical complications.” In 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture fined OHSU nearly $12,000 for repeated violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, including for allowing nine monkeys to escape from the facility and for the deaths of five monkeys as a result of dehydration, being injected with unapproved compounds, and improper procedures performed by an inadequately trained employee.

“Students live and work on university campuses for years without knowing that animals are being burned, poisoned, crippled, blinded, and subjected to other cruel treatment right under their noses,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA is asking caring OHSU students to speak out against the abuse of sensitive, sentient beings in their midst.”

PETA points out that a 2018 Pew Research poll found that the majority of Americans oppose animal experimentation, with even greater opposition among younger demographics such as college students. No animal test is prohibited by law, no matter how painful or irrelevant, and mice, rats, birds, reptiles, and amphibians are excluded from protection under federal law.

Numerous published studies have shown that animal experimentation wastes resources and lives, as more than 90% of highly promising results from basic science research—much of it involving animal experimentation—fail to lead to treatments for humans. And 95% of new medications that are found to be effective in animals fail in human clinical trials.

PETA opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview that fosters violence toward other animals. For more information, please click here.