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The executive director of one of Oregon’s largest unions says Gov. Tina Kotek caught him and other labor leaders by surprise when she called for the eventual closure of the Oregon National Primate Research Center.
The Beaverton facility, run by Oregon Health & Science University, employs 408 people. About 170 of them are members of the Oregon chapter of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.
“We were surprised and not ecstatic,” Joe Baessler, executive director of Oregon AFSCME, said in an interview.
Late last month, Kotek told leaders at OHSU that she’d like researchers to wrap up their work and close the center amid concern about how animals there are treated. In a statement to WW, a spokeswoman confirmed Kotek’s sentiment.
“While the governor has very limited authority under Oregon law to weigh in on the proposed [OHSU-Legacy Health] merger, she does believe that OHSU should figure out how to close its primate research center, just like Harvard University did 10 years ago,” spokeswoman Elisabeth Shepard wrote. “The governor has directly advocated for OHSU leadership to complete their current research obligations and move towards shutting the center down in a humane and responsible manner.”
Taking a stand on the primate center puts Kotek in a tough political position. AFSCME endorsed her for governor in 2022 and contributed to her campaign. Her call came just as the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine began running ads on television and radio describing alleged abuses at the center.
The Washington, D.C.-based animal rights group and others, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, are lobbying hard to force OHSU to close the primate center in order to win regulatory approval for its proposed purchase of Legacy Health. Foes of the center have submitted thousands of comments to a volunteer committee that’s advising the Oregon Health Authority’s Health Care Market Oversight unit on whether to approve the combination.
Baessler, the union leader, says employees and researchers at the primate center feel like they’re being attacked on multiple fronts. The Trump administration is trying to cut funding for the National Institutes of Health, which pays most of the center’s $60 million annual budget, and animal rights activists are demonizing the center.
“These people are not monsters,” Baessler says. “They’re trying to figure out how to cure Parkinson’s and cancer. They aren’t testing cosmetics.”
OHSU won a reprieve on the funding front last week when a federal judge in Massachusetts permanently barred the Trump administration from slashing the amount of “indirect funding” that the NIH provides along with each grant. Indirect funding pays for overhead like heat and electricity in labs. The administration is expected to appeal.
OHSU faces continuing pressure in the Oregon Legislature. Rep. David Gomberg (D-Otis), a longtime opponent of the primate center, says OHA must listen to citizens’ concerns as it mulls approval of the Legacy deal.
“If there’s not a satisfactory acknowledgement, we need to consider the alternatives,” Gomberg said in an interview.
Gomberg sponsored a bill in 2023 that required OHSU to disclose how many primates were used in experiments and for breeding, how many it bought and sold, and how many were injured or killed “in a manner that resulted in an animal welfare citation by the USDA.”
The Oregonian published dueling opinion pieces about the primate center on Sunday. In one, OHSU head of research Peter Barr-Gillespie argues that research on primates remains necessary for curing diseases in humans.
“We understand this research is controversial and makes many people uncomfortable; we ourselves are animal lovers as well as scientists,“ Barr-Gillespie and co-author Skip Bohm write. “Still, we stand firm that this research is critically important if we are to identify, prevent, treat or eradicate debilitating diseases and improve human health.”
Dr. Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, countered that primate research is outmoded and cruel. OHSU, he writes, should shutter the primate center, sell the campus in Beaverton (worth $250 million, he says), and use the money to hire more nurses and improve patient health.
Many of the experiments being done at the primate center are pointless, Barnard says. In 2023, he writes, researchers got monkeys high on cannabis for months, then restrained them in chairs and “electro-ejaculated” them to prove that pot affects sperm count. But physicians already tell fertility patients to avoid weed, he says.
“Yes, your taxes are used to electro-ejaculate monkeys on drugs,” Barnard writes.
PETA is continuing its campaign as OHSU seeks regulatory approval to buy Legacy. On Friday night, it set up a neon sign on the Congresswoman Darlene Hooley Pedestrian Bridge over Interstate 5 near OHSU, saying “CLOSE OHSU MONKEY LAB.”
PETA planned to project the message again Sunday night.