More than a decade ago, I spoke out against the pointless and painful monkey experiments at Harvard University’s New England Primate Research Center, which finally shut down in 2015 after ongoing violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
So I was heartened to learn that Oregon Health & Science University’s board of directors has authorized the university to begin negotiations with the National Institutes of Health to close the Oregon National Primate Research Center and transition its monkeys into sanctuary care. It is a common-sense decision that sends a clear message from the medical and scientific community: Animal experimentation does not benefit human health and should no longer be supported. Instead, the gold standard for studying human health should be clinical trials with human volunteers and research using human cells and tissues.
A history of controversial research
But for more than half a century, ONPRC conducted experiments on monkeys in an attempt to understand human health conditions. Monkeys were infected with fatal viruses. Experimenters created binge-drinking monkeys and intoxicated pregnant monkeys to study the effect on their fetuses. Mothers were fed a “Western diet,” and their infant offspring were killed so their brains could be sliced and examined.
These experiments were not only cruel but also futile due to species differences and unnecessary because the research could be, and often had already been, studied ethically in humans. Human-relevant methods like organoids and organ chips are also being used to better understand fetal alcohol exposure, HIV infection and treatment, and multiple sclerosis, among the conditions that ONPRC used monkeys to study.
In the last year, there has been a groundswell of support for closing ONPRC. The governor and legislators, doctors and scientists, advocacy groups, and more than 25,000 Oregonians have called on OHSU to shut down ONPRC.
The shift to human-relevant science
Instead of monkeys, Harvard now focuses on microfluidic devices. Harvard’s Wyss Institute develops organ chips that mimic the lung, intestine, kidney, and other organs to study human disease. It is technologies like these that the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health are all turning to as they phase out animal testing.
I applaud OHSU leadership for laying the foundation for the closure of ONPRC. Now, it is time for the institutions supporting the remaining six National Primate Research Centers to do the same.
Marge Peppercorn is a pediatrician.
