Oregon university ordered to pay $400K to PETA over experiment that made rodents ingest copious amounts of wine

The Oregon Health & Science University has been ordered to pay $400,000 to an animal rights organization after they refused to comply with public information requests related to a bizarre experiment involving drunk rodents.

The experiment involved making prairie voles ingest the equivalent of 15 bottles of wine a day and then measuring the infidelity of the rodents afterward. The scientists tested the voles for "partner preference" and then killed them and dissected the animals.

'PETA urges OHSU to see the writing on the wall, get out of the animal business, and switch to state-of-the-art testing methods that actually help humans.'

PETA sued when OHSU refused to turn over videos and photographs from the vole infidelity experiments, and a Multnomah County Circuit Court ruled in favor of the animal rights group in 2023. The university was ordered to pay costs and fees to PETA for violating Oregon's public records laws.

OHSU appealed the decision at the Oregon Court of Appeals on Monday, according to KATU-TV.

The university also defended the bizarre experiment in a statement from July 22.

"Excessive alcohol can lead to serious health consequences and often is associated with devastating effects on social relationships. Specifically, heavy alcohol use is associated with increased rates of separation, divorce, and intimate partner violence," read the statement from OHSU.

"Because evaluating what is the cause and what is the effect in this association (the heavy alcohol use or the problems in the social relationship) is practically impossible in humans, the laboratory of Andrey Ryabinin, Ph.D., works with prairie voles," they added.

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Photo by Osmancan Gurdogan/Anadolu via Getty Images

PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo excoriated the university in a statement.

"OHSU has already wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to hide these indefensible experiments from the public eye," she said. "PETA urges OHSU to see the writing on the wall, get out of the animal business, and switch to state-of-the-art testing methods that actually help humans."

"This victory sends a strong message to OHSU and similar entities that accountability is paramount," said PETA vice president of laboratory investigation cases Dr. Alka Chandna.

A similar study was mocked in 2012 for suggesting that single mothers raise less loving children, based on experiments on prairie voles.

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