Oral Arguments to Be Heard Monday as OHSU Battles to Avoid Paying PETA More Than $400,000 Judgment

For Immediate Release:
May 9, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

In 2023, a Multnomah County circuit court ordered Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) to pay PETA more than $400,000 in a case involving an infamous sex experiment with drunken, tethered voles, and the school is still trying to avoid paying up. On Monday morning, OHSU’s appeal will be heard in the Oregon Court of Appeals. 

The order came after the court found that OHSU violated Oregon public records law by trying to keep videos of the experiment from PETA, whom it described internally as the “wrong hands.” OHSU is appealing a number of the court’s findings and imposition of the fees and penalty award under public records law.

“OHSU has already wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to hide these indefensible experiments from the public eye, and has flushed millions down the drain on other equally cruel and pointless experiments on animals,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “PETA urges OHSU to see the writing on the wall, get out of the animal business, and switch to state-of-the-art testing methods that actually help humans.”

Where:           Oregon Appellate Media Webcast

When:             Monday, May 12, 9 a.m. PT

Why:               In the cruel and bizarre experiments, tiny prairie voles were given the equivalent of 15 bottles of wine a day to purportedly study the impact of human alcohol consumption on infidelity. In one test, a male vole was put in a cage with an arbitrarily selected female partner tethered at one end and another female tethered at the opposite. Experimenters recorded how much time the male spent “huddling” with each. In another, a male vole “intruder” was dropped into a cage occupied by a “resident” male. The experimenters then watched the voles fight. All the voles were killed at the end of the tests. Their brains and the fetuses of pregnant females were dissected.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every 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.