The Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) is one of eight regionally funded primate centers in the United States. Located on 250 acres just west of Portland, ONPRC houses over 4,200 non-human primates including macaques, capuchins, and other species used for biomedical and scientific experimentation. With an on-site breeding colony, the Oregon center is the largest supplier of rhesus monkeys for research in the United States. The 1997 base grant for ONPRC was $7, 133, 463 with an additional $7,506,807 going to individual researchers for a combined total of $14,640,270. The center is funded by the National Center for Research Resources and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). These two governmental agencies funnel finances from the tax paying public and re-direct them into non-human animal based research. In 1998 alone, the NIH allocated over $12 billion to non-human animal based studies in the United States.

Opening in 1962, ONPRC was the first of the eight centers in the country. According to the ONPRC website, its mission was to provide “an institution where scientists from various disciplines could conduct investigations and train others in health-related basic research using non-human primates” (http://www.ohsu.edu/ONPRC/). ONPRC scientists claim to be studying:

• What causes premature birth

• How the ovary functions

• How male and female gametes develop

• How steroid hormones act in the reproductive tract and in brain cells

• How neurotransmitters modulate the differentiation and functions of brain cells and regulate sexual maturity

• How immune responses are regulated

• What causes cardiovascular disease

• How infant nutrition affects visual development

• How HIV causes tissue specific diseases

• Much more

What ONPRC, like the other seven regional primate research centers in the U.S., fails to present is how exactly all of these non-human primate based studies will further human health. Concerned citizens throughout the Portland area have been asking ONPRC for years to engage in a public forum to discuss just what exact benefits have resulted from almost 45 years of non-human primate based experimentation. Furthermore the medical and scientific implications of past, current, and future experimentation need to be discussed in the public arena. ONPRC has declined every offer made towards a public forum. It is obviously much easier for them to operate with little opposition. If the public were to be informed that little opposition would become enormous.

Contact the Oregon National Primate Research Center and encourage them to discuss what has come out of the center’s research that is applicable to human health since it opened in 1962.

Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC)
505 N.W. 185th Avenue
Beaverton, OR 97006-3499
(503)690-5500