Exit of animal use critics from the Trump administration, opposition from major research funder, & Trump policy-driven surge in Chinese lab demand stimulate “monkey hoarding”
HILLSBORO, Oregon––Hopes that the Oregon National Primate Research Center might become a sanctuary for the almost 5,000 resident monkeys and baboons appear to have been dashed by Oregon Health & Science University president Shereef Elnahal.
Elnahal reportedly cited fiscal concerns about two months after the $4.5 billion Simons Foundation, among the Oregon Health & Science University’s biggest funders, and one of the biggest funders of studies in nonhuman primates generally, made its displeasure with the sanctuary proposal clear through The Transmitter.
The Transmitter is a Simons Foundation-sponsored periodical that “provides news and analysis of advancements in neuroscience research,” summarizes Wikipedia, “and is the successor to Spectrum, a publication focused on autism research which originated as the News & Opinion section of the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative website.”
(U,S. Geological Survey photo)
“No federal funding available”
The sanctuary proposal “is no longer viable because there is no federal funding available to pay for it, according to multiple faculty members and an internal email,” reported Kristine de Leon for The Oregonian and OregonLive on June 11, 2026.
“Faculty members said Oregon Health & Science University president Dr. Shereef Elnahal informed faculty leaders of the decision during a meeting” on June 9, 2026,” de Leon wrote.
The faculty members “requested anonymity as they are not authorized to speak with the media,” de Leon said.
“An internal email” sent the following day “to employees at the primate center by director Rudolf ‘Skip’ Bohm Jr. Shereef Elnahal repeated that account,” de Leon added.
(Oregon Health & Science University photo)
Cost estimated at $200 million
Further explained Science online news editor David Grimm, “A report commissioned by Oregon Health & Science University in January 2026 concluded that converting the Oregon National Primate Research Center,” opened in 1962, “into a sanctuary would cost more than $200 million, and that shuttering the center outright would be similarly expensive, because of a loss of grant money and because large numbers of monkeys would need to be transferred elsewhere.”
“Loss of grant money” would include the Simons Foundation contributions.
At a July 9, 2026 meeting of the Oregon Health & Science University faculty senate, Grimm detailed, “Elnahal said financial concerns ultimately doomed the plan. Though the National Institutes of Health allows grant recipients to expense the retirement of research animals, the Oregon Health & Science University president said the agency had no mechanism in place to fund a sanctuary conversion, an attendee who was not authorized to speak on the record told Science.” Therefore, the source told Grimm, the Oregon National Primate Research Center becoming a sanctuary or closing “is off the table.”
Oregon Health & Science University may change research emphasis
“This is very good news,” Oregon National Primate Research Center director Bohm emailed to staff the next day, “in an email obtained by Science,” Grimm said.
“Even so,” Grimm continued, “Bohm wrote that Elnahal has said multiple times he wants to see significant changes at the Oregon National Primate Research Center.
“The email didn’t elaborate on what those changes could entail,” Grimm noted, “but another internal communication obtained by Science indicates [Elnahal] has repeatedly stated a desire to limit the research scope of the center, focusing more on non-animal studies and moving away from research that investigates the impact of maternal alcohol addiction on baby monkeys and other hot-button studies.”
Studies of this sort have for more than half a century drawn critical notice from animal advocates both to the Oregon National Primate Research Center in specific and to monkey studies in general.
PCRM still hopeful
“An Oregon Health & Science University spokesperson says Bohm’s email is not an official communication and is not accurate,” Grimm added.
According to Grimm’s source, “Oregon Health & Science University executive leaders have not made any decisions about whether to transition the primate center to a sanctuary.”
The spokesperson told Grimm that the Oregon Health & Science University board of directors “will meet on July 27, 2026 to provide an update on negotiations with the National Institutes of Health,” Grimm said.
Grimm also mentioned that Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine founder Neal Barnard, who has long campaigned for closure of the Oregon National Primate Research Center, “believes a sanctuary plan is still very much alive.
“Negotiations are still active,” Barnard told Grimm. “I expect the National Institutes of Health will get a proposal from Oregon Health & Science University on how to make this happen, and I expect they will find a way to make this happen,” Barnard said.
What was the Simons Foundation doing behind the scenes?
Former U.S. Food & Drug Administration commissioner Marty Makary, who had been the leading critic of animal-based research in the Trump administration, resigned on May 12, 2026 under direct pressure from U.S. president Donald Trump. Makary departed before the Simons Foundation, through The Transmitter, weighed in on the Oregon National Primate Research Center sanctuary conversion issue in a public way.
(See FDA commissioner Makary, critic of animal testing, gets the Trump boot.)
But the Simons Foundation may already have had considerable behind-the-scenes influence, reading between the lines of “Oregon primate center scientists fight proposed sanctuary transition,” by Transmitter senior reporter Calli McMurray, published on May 21, 2026.
Reported McMurray, ahead of local mainstream media, “Researchers at a national primate center in Oregon have formed a grassroots nonprofit coalition to argue against the center becoming an animal sanctuary.”
Oregon Voices for Biomedical Research
Among the two Oregon National Primate Research Center faculty members leading the coalition is Rachael Wolters, identified by MacMurray as “an assistant professor of pathobiology and immunology,” who “studies pediatric infectious diseases and how neuroinflammation caused by HIV affects cognitive development” in baby macaque monkeys.”
The other coalition leader mentioned is Christopher D. Kroenke, identified by MacMurray as a “professor of neuroscience at the Oregon National Primate Research Center and Advanced Imaging Research Center,” who “studies fetal brain development.”
“The group, Oregon Voices for Biomedical Research, launched its first campaign at the end of April,” MacMurray said.
“The campaign includes ads on two billboards in Beaverton and 51 buses in Portland,” MacMurray continued, renting billboards previously used by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine for advertisements criticizing the Oregon National Primate Research Center.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Website & form letter
Oregon Voices for Biomedical Research also posted a website, MacMurray detailed, outlining “the research that could end if the center is shuttered, including projects on fetal brain development, endometriosis, pediatric anesthesia and gene therapy for inherited blindness,” a list affording multiple clues to what the Oregon National Primate Research Center has been doing to monkeys and baboons lately.
Most of these are areas of research funded by the Simons Foundation.
The Oregon Voices for Biomedical Research website, said MacMurray, “also includes a form letter visitors can email to state representatives and other leaders to advocate for keeping the center operating as a research facility.”
AIDS claim appears to contradict research history
MacMurray attributed the initial $40,000 funding for the Oregon Voices for Biomedical Research to a GoFundMe campaign posted by “Andrew Sylvester, senior staff scientist at Oregon Health & Science University’s Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute,” who “studies AIDS and began using nonhuman primates in his work in 2002 after observing that in-vitro work did not adequately model the disease.”
A questionable aspect of the Sylvester resume as stated is that the National Institutes of Health began cutting back funding for AIDS research using chimpanzees in 2008 and quit funding AIDS research on chimps altogether in November 2015, upon concluding that nonhuman primates did not adequately model the progression of AIDS in humans.
Further, Centers for Disease Control deputy chief of staff Sam Beyda, a former member of the now disbanded Department of Governmental Efficiency team, circa November 1, 2025 ordered CDC scientists “to phase out all of their monkey research,” including HIV/AIDS studies, having concluded that it was unproductive.
Brief push to retire monkeys from research
The Oregon National Primate Research Center is the biggest of seven national primate research centers funded by the National Institutes of Health.
“The Oregon center receives the largest base grant of $13.7 million,” reported David Grimm for Science in February 2026.
Recounted MacMurray, “The National Institutes of Health previously approached Oregon Health & Sciences University about converting the Oregon National Primate Research Center into an animal sanctuary and winding down research there. In February 2026, the university voted to enter negotiations over this potential change,” with a six-month deadline for the negotiators, ending in August 2026, “to work out a deal.”
This, MacMurray mentioned, “follows the decision to phase out all monkey research at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention. The agency has since proposed to relocate hundreds of its monkeys to a sanctuary in Texas,” specifically the Born Free USA Primate Sanctuary near Dilley, Texas.
(See Inotive bankruptcy suggests laboratory monkey business is in a death spiral.)
“CDC has seemingly backtracked”
But “The U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention has seemingly backtracked,” Grimm updated on June 22, 2026.
“In late May,” Grimm explained, “all seven National Primate Research Centers, along with more than 20 other biomedical organizations, sent a letter to CDC protesting the plan. A few days later, Alpha Genesis, one of the largest suppliers of research monkeys in the United States, filed a complaint with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, alleging CDC didn’t have a legal justification to exclude other interested parties. Shortly thereafter, CDC rescinded the [retirement] plan.
“Now,” Grimm said, “CDC has announced an ‘open-market’ solicitation for facilities willing to host the monkeys.
(Yamassee police department photo)
Researchers want the formerly “surplus” monkeys
That ‘open-market’ solicitation excluded bids from “any biomedical institutions,” Grimm wrote, “even those like the Washington National Biomedical Research Center, which had hoped to retire the animals to its breeding facility in Mesa, Arizona.
Also excluded from bidding was the laboratory monkey supplier Alpha Genesis,
Alpha Genesis president Xavier Westergaard, “had once hoped to take the CDC monkeys, though Alpha Genesis planned to keep them in biomedical research, if only as breeding stock,” Grimm mentioned.
(See Behind the Alpha Genesis monkey “great escape” & recaptures.)
ANIMALS 24-7 reported then that, “As matters develop, money may determine the outcome, explaining that, “Sanctuarians have estimated that the cost of care and facilities for the CDC monkeys could run as high as $14 million,” whereas Westergaard told Grimm that Alpha Genesis could take the CDC monkeys “basically for free,” as early as “this afternoon.”
Trump policy drives Chinese demand
Only six weeks later, any plans to retire any monkeys from biomedical research may be jeopardized by a sudden boom in monkey demand from Chinese biomedical researchers, driving monkey prices up and producing a shortage of monkeys available to U.S. researchers.
The boom in Chinese demand appears to have been driven by Donald Trump administration edicts against U.S./Chinese scientific collaborations, obliging the Chinese biomedical research community to develop the laboratory capacity to work without American partners.
Formerly, Chinese breeders supplied macaques to U.S. laboratories. Now those macaques are being kept and used at home––and even at that, demand outstrips supply.
Reported South China Morning Post science correspondent Dannie Pengin from Beijing on July 16, 2023, “A boom in China into new drug research and development is driving laboratory monkey prices back to pandemic-era highs, forcing some researchers to halt their studies.
“Monkeys simply cannot be bought”
“According to Guo Xiangyu, a scientist at Jinan University in Guangzhou who studies ways to develop non-human primate models for major brain diseases,” Pengin wrote, “laboratory monkey prices have risen steadily since Chinese New Year,” February 17, 2026.
“Suppliers are now generally quoting about 180,000 yuan (U.S. $27,000) per animal,” Pengin explained.
Guo, “who works at the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Non-Human Primate Research,” Pengin said, told Pengin that “In many cases, the monkeys simply cannot be bought. Suppliers say they have all been pre-booked.”
(Daniel Leventhal photo)
“According to the 2025 annual report on the progress of China’s new drug registration clinical trials, published by the regulatory authority on June 23, 2026,” Pengin noted, “there were more than 5,000 clinical trials in China last year – a record high.
“Of these, 2,997 – or 57 per cent – were clinical trials for new drugs, an 18% year-on-year increase,” coinciding with the beginning of the second Trump administration and apparently now accelerating.
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