David Gomberg

Gomberg, D-Central Coast, represents House District 10 in the Oregon Legislature.

Behind tall fences and security gates, on a pristine wooded campus at the edge of Hillsboro lies the Oregon National Primate Research Center. School groups are invited to visit where they will see thousands of non-human primates in large airy cages or walled corrals happily socializing, playing and eating. What they will not see, a few steps away, are rows of buildings where these magnificent creatures macaques, baboons and monkeys are the subject of medical research, simply because they share 93 percent of the same DNA as we human primates.

Last summer I asked to see the research rooms with my legislative staff. Inside we found stacks of small, 3-by-3-foot cages. Residents, we were told, stayed in those cages, inside those windowless rooms, for up to three years. As we entered, one baby primate cowered behind her mother. Dont worry, the technician reassured her. Im not here to take your baby. Not today, I thought.

The primate research center is now being sued by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to release videos of maternal nutrition research. According to PETA, in these experiments, pregnant monkeys are fed special diets. Their babies are later separated and deliberately frightened to test their response to stress. In a 2010 project, $750,000 was spent on similar research where technicians either stared at the infants to intimidate them or used a Mr. Potato Head doll to frighten them, PETA contends.

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U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection reports document ongoing problems: stress-based hair loss, burns from electric heating pads, incorrect injections, cages too small to sit up in, accidental strangulation by chains in the enclosure, death from being trapped by PVC pipes, deaths from stress induced riots", death from anesthesia mistakes, death from dehydration, death from being given a toxic substance and death from inattention during childbirth. Some of these mistakes resulted in fines exceeding $10,000, but curiously, these penalties are not listed among reports posted to the centers web page.

Since 2017, the research center has been cited at least 10 times for Animal Welfare Act violations, the inspection reports show. That is substantially more than any other such center in the United States during this same period, according to the animal rights group Stop Animal Exploitation Now.

Center administrators told me that, even during normal research, about 500 primates are killed annually in terminal protocols examining aging, AIDS, depression, infectious diseases, substance abuse and obesity. The sad fact is that one in 10 primates in Hillsboro will not survive the year.

What I saw inside the primate research center were young animals trained to extend their arms from cages for easy examination.

The scientists I met at the center are proud of their work. But not so proud it seems that they want to tell people what they do. Instead, they requested legislation to keep their names from the public. These protections are so broad that even the identity of the company delivering monkey chow to the center cannot be released.

These same scientists will argue they are doing important work that will improve or save lives. Perhaps so. But who measures the results? And why dont we Oregonians know more?

An analysis from the Legislative Fiscal Office details that the center, a unit of Oregon Health & Science University, receives no state money but over $50 million annually in federal grants and funds. We should all be asking if the money is well spent.

Is research on non-human primates relevant to human primates? Is research done here in Oregon duplicative of work done at one of the other six national primate centers? Are non-primate research technologies like computer modeling less expensive and more accurate? We wont learn the answer to these questions because the primate research industry is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise funded by and fueled by people invested in doing things tomorrow the same way they did yesterday.

Ethologists, geneticists, and other scientists have taught us that primates share many physiological and emotional characteristics with human beings. They have feelings like us, they suffer like us, and they have social relationships that are important to them just as our relationships are to us. As a nation, weve ended the use of chimpanzees in invasive medical experiments. Its time we extend that same policy of no-testing to all primates.

For those of us who believe primate research is unnecessary and unproductive, the answer is not passionate protests at the center gates. We can only end these cruel practices by pulling the federal financial plug. The time has come for fundamental changes in our research practices and the treatment of our primate cousins.

Read more here:
Opinion: Primate research is cruel, expensive, unnecessary and happening here - OregonLive.com