While true, I'm not sure why you'd point these things out like the article is a nothing-burger. Science starts somewhere. Mice have traditionally served this and in (relatively) recent years organoids. This simply means the hypothesis didn't fail in the first stages and can advance. This is decidedly good news. Is there a good chance this fails in further development? Yes, like all science.

Wow, crazy to see happenings in my backyard appear on lemmy

This articles a little misrepresentive of what the OHSU Board of directors actually decided about the fate of the Primate center. The ONPRC is just down the road from here and I watched the board meeting where the decision was made.

The resolution authorizes the creation of a plan to scale down the colony size at the ONPRC with a bunch of pretty important caveats. It's not transitioning to human based approaches, instead it's going to focus on cutting edge NAMS (new approach methodologies) to work toward a future where animal testing is no longer needed.

Some of the caveates:

• The animals cannot be harmed by downsizing. Rhesus Macaques have social structure, family groups, friends, relationships and territory that all impacts their psychological health. Simply uprooting them and shipping them elsewhere would be more harmful than helpful and trade actual animal well-being for a quick political win
• Oregon, and the US as a whole can't lose any unique capabilities the ONPRC provides. Currently that's quite a bit of stuff where non-animal models haven't caught up yet.

Prior to this, there was an attempt to transition the center to an animal sanctuary, which sounds nice, but has significantly less strict requirements for animal care and public accountability. That resolution failed due to being financially unviable.

To be clear nothing is happening yet. The resolution was to investigate, research, and plan for downsizing if possible. No active downsizing is currently happening. Everyone, including the researchers at the center, want to reduce animal testing wherever possible. How that gets done safely is more complex than just "turn off the monkeys"

Disclaimer:

I'm a member of a non-profit trying to battle misinformation around the ONPRC. If you'd like to read more about what's going on, you can find more information or reach out at

https://savescienceoregon.org/

While animal activism is a good thing, PETA has a unique "the ends justify the means approach" that gives other activists a bad name. Historically they were famous for extreme publicity stunts to raise awareness for animals who can't advocate for themselves, but in recent years function more as a lobbyists interweaving animal protectionism with various unrelated issues. These lobbying efforts are contributing to the erosion and brain drain of American academic science among other important issues.

Full disclosure, I'm biased and affiliated with a non-profit trying to save academic research in Oregon. PETA has been the largest source of misinformation, using a huge amount of money to establish billboard campaigns, targeted ads, and misleading polls to paint the research center as villainous. Everyone wants to protect animals but the nuance of protecting life saving research dependant on animal models is a much harder position to argue than "save the animals".

Research is slowly drifting away from animal testing, but today many scientific breakthroughs (some concrete examples currently under threat include a cure for HIV, GLP1S, Non-hormonal birth control) rely on animals and non-animal alternatives haven't yet caught up in capability.

If your interested in learning more, Save Science Oregon is a website we've built to battle some of this information.

Sometimes zero thought arguments warrant one word responses.

Semiconductors

Mostly banned to protect vested interests like US Auto industry

We leave the dandelions for as long as possible without angering the neighbors who appreciate dandelions less

Yes, we are going for exclusively native plants (except the plants planted by the previous home owners)

I think I'll do this! I'm not sure if there are any mason bees actually around here but plenty of other species

It's fairly deep. It has premade tubes that are pretty long and you can swap out each year but they got wet over winter so I'm a little glad nobody moved in this year at least

That's sad :( I live in suburbia so I can't really see everything in my neighbors yard or control how they use pesticides.

The yard closest to the bee box is filled with fruit trees and grape vines which I would think was cool if I was a bee.

The far yard is just boring grass likely drenched in roundup or something for dandelions

There are a bunch of flowering bushes I see bees frequently visit but I'm not sure on mason bees in particular