BREAKING: OHSU to Negotiate Primate Center Transition to Sanctuary, End of Experiments 

For Immediate Release:
February 9, 2026

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Under intense pressure over the last year from state legislators, PETA, tens of thousands of Oregonians, and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Board of Directors today unanimously passed a resolution authorizing negotiations with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to end all experiments on monkeys and transition the federally funded Oregon National Primate Research Center into a sanctuary, a move that would mark a revolution in progressive science and animal welfare.

The primate center, which currently kills some 1,300 monkeys a year in experiments but breeds to keep the total number at 5,000, will stop breeding monkeys as OHSU devises a plan to end 60 years of much-criticized tests in which experimenters forcefully pumped nicotine into monkeys, addicted monkeys to alcohol, fed pregnant monkeys junk food diets and then forcibly removed from them and killed their babies, and repeatedly, painfully electro-ejaculated male monkeys, causing decades of suffering.

“This is a glorious day for monkeys and for science,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “Research has moved beyond monkey experiments and into cutting-edge science with AI, organs-on-chips, and more, and PETA thanks OHSU president Dr. Shereef Elnahal, the board of directors, and NIH for shifting toward human-based technologies, while still caring for the monkeys who remain at the primate center.”

The resolution follows discussions between the university and NIH, its primary funder, and pressure from PETA and PCRM, beginning with PETA’s formal request that the Oregon Health Authority condition a merger between the university and Legacy Health on the closure of the primate center. PETA also launched an onslaught of social media ads.

PCRM then sponsored TV and radio ads using video and audio from PETA’s two undercover investigations at the primate center. PETA supplied expert scientific and community testimony, and thousands of PETA supporters contacted their state legislators and Governor Tina Kotek, who added pressure by urging the university to phase out the monkey laboratory. In July, the legislature passed a budget note requiring the university to close the primate center if NIH cut funding by 25 percent, or if any state money was used to support it.

In May, PETA brought its art installation “How the Other Half Lives” to Salem and Portland. The giant pair of binoculars shows video of monkeys circling their tiny cages inside laboratories juxtaposed with troupes of monkeys living happily in their natural forest homes. PETA supporters also projected a giant light-up banner over the busy I-5 highway demanding, “CLOSE OHSU Monkey LAB.”

PETA has worked for 20 years to expose and end the experiments on monkeys at the primate center. During this time, PETA successfully sued the university to obtain video of experiments in which pregnant monkeys were fed junk food, and their babies were deliberately intimidated in an “intruder test.” PETA also obtained video footage from the school of a publicly funded experiment in which young monkeys were purposely frightened with a Mr. Potato Head toy.

The primate center violated the federal Animal Welfare Act dozens of times. In April 2025, PETA urged NIH to investigate multiple violations at the university, including a Japanese macaque who developed sepsis, was denied veterinary care, and died.

The Oregon primate center is the largest of the seven remaining federally funded primate facilities in the country. It uses about 1,300 monkeys in painful and deadly experiments each year, and cages 4,000 or more for breeding and other purposes.

Under similar pressure from PETA, Harvard University closed its primate center in 2015. PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out thatEvery Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.