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Oregon Health & Science University has invited state legislators and staff to tour the Oregon National Primate Research Center. The facility is under threat from federal budget cuts and local efforts to shutter it backed by Gov. Tina Kotek and Salem lawmakers.
Aaron Fiedler, OHSU’s director of state relations, sent an invitation via email to state legislators and their staffs on July 31, according to a copy obtained by WW. Invitees may pick from two dates, Sept. 17 or Oct. 9, the invitation says.
Visitors will “meet ONPRC leadership, scientists, clinicians and care staff, and learn more about the important and lifesaving research happening there every day,” Fiedler wrote. “If neither of the above dates work for you, we are also happy to find additional opportunities to accommodate you and your legislative team.”
The tour is a charm offensive of sorts for a facility that has drawn scorn from animal rights activists for decades. ONPRC’s opponents amped up their efforts this year with a radio and television ad campaign describing infant macaques being torn from their mothers for “fear experiments” and monkeys being scalded to death by a cage-cleaning system. Video showed monkeys pacing and rocking in cages.
Fiedler sent the invitation to one of the Legislature’s staunchest critics of the primate center: Rep. David Gomberg (D-Otis). 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 by accident.
In May, Gomberg and two other Democratic representatives introduced a bill that would phase out research on monkeys at the primate center. A hearing on the bill drew 100 people seeking to testify, most of them in favor of its passage. It failed, but Gomberg has vowed to return to the matter in coming legislative sessions.
Gomberg says he’s worried that OHSU will give legislators the same tour of the primate center that it offers to the public, which he calls the “zoo tour.”
“You see the corrals and colonies with lots of monkey playing, eating and making more monkeys,” Gomberg said in an interview. “But you don’t see the building where primates are held in windowless cages, separated from each other and subjected to tests for years.”
Gomberg says he’s done both the “zoo tour” and one in which he saw much more. For the latter, he had to submit vaccination records and wear a hazardous materials suit. The invitation to legislators said nothing about immunizations or special dress. Gomberg says he asked OHSU about the extent of the tour a week ago but hasn’t heard back.
“There has been a lot of misinformation about the primate center directed to elected officials, in particular, and these tours are an opportunity for legislators and their staff to talk to people who do this critical, potentially lifesaving, highly regulated work every day,” an OHSU spokeswoman said in an email.
She didn’t answer a question about what parts of the primate center legislators would be permitted to visit.
