PETA Exhibit Exposes Violent History of Animal Experiments, Including at OHSU

For Immediate Release:
April 27, 2023

Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382

PETA is set to unveil its eye-opening exhibit “Without Consent,” which explores the troubled history of experiments on nonconsenting animals. The installation challenges institutions, including Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), to rethink this exploitative, expensive, cruel, and archaic concept of science. Watch the trailer here.

When:    May 1–5, 12 noon–4 p.m.

Where:    Pioneer Courthouse Square, on the southwest corner of S.W. Sixth Avenue and S.W. Yamhill Street, Portland

Modeled after the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, “Without Consent” will be on display locally for five days as part of a national tour. It features 24 panels with descriptions and photographs of nearly 200 animal experiments conducted at U.S. institutions from the 1920s through today. An interactive virtual exhibit is also available here.

“Without Consent” tells the true stories of animals harmed and killed in experiments that they did not and could not consent to,” says Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “Humans are only one animal species among many. Having the power to exploit the others does not give us the right to do so.”

The 110 million animals killed every year in U.S. laboratories are individuals who experience pain and fear, yet they’re burned, force-fed chemicals, sickened with disease, and robbed of their babies. At OHSU, live pigs are mutilated in its obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) physician training program. At least 64 of the school’s OB/GYN residents cut into as many as 48 live female pigs, dissected their organs, and performed other invasive surgeries on them, before eventually killing them. Earlier this year, PETA released video footage from OHSU’s taxpayer-funded experiments on prairie voles in which the animals were paired up for just one week before being separated, given the equivalent of 15 bottles of wine a day, used in a battery of tests, and then killed. At OHSU’s Oregon National Primate Research Center, PETA’s video exposés revealed that monkeys were terrorized by staff; denied veterinary care and pain relief; driven insane by confinement to small, barren cages; and killed in experiments.

“Without Consent” also makes the point that vulnerable humans—including orphans in tuberculosis and psychological experiments, immigrant women in gynecological surgeries, soldiers in LSD and poison gas tests, and impoverished Black men in syphilis experiments—were exploited in experiments. Just as society now understands that these experiments were wrong, “Without Consent” shows we need to let a similar moral awakening guide our conduct today by extending consideration to other nonconsenting sentient beings who suffer and die in experiments from floor-cleaner product tests to mother-infant separation studies.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.