Lawyers at OHSU

[May 28th, 2003] Like most bills winding their way through the legislative sausage factory in Salem, House Bill 3093 didn't start out rancid. It was an innocuous measure aimed at updating statutes to reflect changes in technology.

That's before the lawyers at OHSU monkeyed around and stuffed in a reeking bit of roguery.

As a "public corporation," Oregon Health & Science University endures less red tape than other state agencies, but it's still bound by Oregon's public-records law.

Over the past several years, pesky reporters and rabid animal-rights activists have used the public-records law to force the university to hand over documents about the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Hillsboro. The result has been extensive protests and some critical ink.

Which is why the university seized on HB 3093 as a chance to shut out the public. Originally, the bill simply added email addresses to the list of items that can be exempted from
public-records laws. But, at OHSU's request, lawmakers added
a section that would let the university withhold the names of animal researchers, the location of such research and even their suppliers.

Why is this a bad thing?

Consider this: Two years ago, WW reported Philip Dawdy got a tip about a researcher using a controversial procedure which involved applying a shock to the males' genitals ("Year of the Monkey," WW, Dec. 26, 2001).

If HB 3093 were then in place, reporter Philip Dawdy would never have been able to obtain documents that showed that the researcher's monkeys were biting themselves and pulling out their hair.

And without that publicity, we suspect, OHSU would have been less likely to change the research procedures to reduce stress on the animals.)