Victory! UW Animal Oversight Committee Drops Legal Fight to Hide Members’ Names

You have to wonder if these University of Washington (UW) officials are tired of losing to PETA yet.

In yet another major win for PETA and another major loss for UW animal experimenters, the university’s animal experimentation oversight committee has given up its years-long legal fight to keep its members’ names secret and has asked a federal court to dismiss its lawsuit.

The request comes a week after PETA and Northwest Animal Rights Network (NARN) filed a motion with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington to dismiss the committee members’ lawsuit, and just two weeks after the Seattle court denied the committee’s attempt to block the release of the members’ names while the case moved forward. That decision removed any legal barrier to PETA and NARN receiving records revealing committee members’ names.

UW’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), which is legally required to serve the public interest, initially claimed that disclosing its members’ identities would violate their rights, citing unwanted communications from the public.

The court rejected the argument, saying it was not enough to allow public servants, including those making consequential decisions about the use and treatment of animals, to use anonymity to avoid accountability.

The dismissal should mark the end of a years-long saga which spanned multiple courts and saw PETA notch three separate Ninth Circuit Court victories before this month’s District Court win. The most recent Ninth Circuit decision rejected IACUC members’ argument that they had a right under the U.S. Constitution to keep their identities secret.

IACUCs are supposed to be the last line of defense for animals imprisoned in university laboratories, yet UW’s IACUC has failed miserably, leading to animals killed by irradiation, starvation, dehydration, strangulation, scalding, blood loss, and more.

Under the provisions of the federal Animal Welfare Act, IACUCs are required to have a certain makeup of members, including a nonscientist and a member representing the general community’s interests in the treatment of animals.

But the UW committee’s “nonscientific” member is Ken Gordon, executive director of the Northwest Association for Biomedical Research. It’s an organization that actively promotes experiments on animals.

Not exactly representative of the community’s interests.

What Else Are They Hiding?

In December 2020, PETA filed a lawsuit against the school for its failure to release photos and videos from primate experiments. The school also failed to turn over documents detailing the primate center’s financial and leadership crises. PETA won after unearthing a UW policy of deleting photos and videos that should have been subject to public records law, forcing UW to pay up more than half a million dollars in penalties and legal fees.

Repeatedly Letting Animals Down

The university’s IACUC has a shameful track record. In 2015, inspectors found that it was acting as a rubber stamp committee—recklessly approving even proposals that hadn’t been filled out properly. Documents revealed that multiple procedures had been approved by the IACUC without adequately detailing what would be done to the animals. This led to the suffering of three monkeys who were used in surgeries, later suffered from “significant health issues” following experiments, and were killed.

After PETA released the first-ever footage shot inside UW’s Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC), which revealed isolated monkeys pacing inside cramped, barren cages, we reviewed public records that further exposed the cruelty in the school’s laboratories.

Between November 2017 and March 2021, 77 incidents were documented in which animals at UW sustained serious injuries or died—nearly two per month. As we said, shameful. Oh, and did we mention that the chair of the IACUC is a liar?

Help PETA Hold UW Accountable—Call For an End to Archaic Experiments on Monkeys!

UW’s experiments are largely funded by taxpayer dollars, so at the very least, the school owes the public full transparency. But that won’t be enough to stop animals from suffering in its laboratories. Join PETA in calling for UW’s president to pull the plug on the WaNPRC: