PETA Unveils Giant Binoculars to Show Public Inside Secretive OHSU Primate Labs
For Immediate Release:
April 28, 2025
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) visitors, students, and faculty will get an eye-opening view today when PETA unveils “How the Other Half Lives.” This installation, featuring a 7.5-foot-tall pair of binoculars, contrasts footage of macaques thriving peacefully in their natural habitats with the harrowing conditions of those trapped in laboratories, including at the school’s Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) where monkeys have died in a series of indefensible “accidents,” and are, among other torturous procedures, forcibly restrained and have painful electrodes used on them. Monkeys at OHSU are bred, and their infants are removed from their mothers.
PETA’s installation is traveling to all seven National Primate Research Centers—federally funded facilities around the country that have killed hundreds of thousands of monkeys while siphoning billions in federal funds, which are spent on demonstrably cruel, ineffective, and deadly experiments that have failed to deliver promised vaccines or cures for human diseases.
“Through these lenses, the public sees what OHSU carefully hides; monkeys trapped in barren metal cages barely bigger than their own bodies, living in fear, and discarded like used paper towels, while their wild kin thrive in rich forests, surrounded by family,” says PETA Senior Science Advisor on Primate Issues Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel. “PETA urges OHSU to end this cruelty, shut down its failed primate center, and shift to modern, animal-free research methods.”
Where: In front of Mackenzie Hall and the OHSU Library, 3286 SW Research Dr., on Wednesday at Salmon Street Springs Fountain, 1000 SW Naito Pkwy.
When: Daily from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., April 28–May 2
Why: In their natural habitat, macaques live in complex, matriarchal societies, forging lifelong bonds, raising their young, and roaming miles daily. They gather in “sleeping trees” at night, huddling close for warmth, safety, and companionship. But this rich existence is being wiped out. Macaque populations are plummeting in part due to the primate experimentation industry that snatches them from the wild to feed a business filled with cruelty, disease, and death.
At ONPRC, experimenters tear infant monkeys from their mothers to cause psychological damage and starve monkeys so they’ll “voluntarily” consume alcohol, before killing them. Other experimenters impregnate monkeys and expose them to dangerous levels of nicotine to induce birth defects in their babies before killing and dissecting them. Recently, the center was hit with a critical violation of the federal Animal Welfare Act when a young monkey died of sepsis after staff ignored her symptoms and failed to provide necessary medical attention.
PETA hopes the installation will inspire change just as its namesake—an 1890 study exposing poverty in the New York tenements—did.
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.
