Animal rights activists say the federal government is wasting millions of taxpayer dollars by conducting the same experiments on animals over and over again.

Activists rallied outside the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center in Hillsboro earlier this weekend.

They cited a study by Ohio animal-rights worker Michael Budkie, who spent more than six months combing through a database on experiments kept by the National Institutes of Health.

Budkie's report says that the N-I-H now funds 450 studies on cocaine, using rats, mice and macaque monkeys.

It also says such federally funded experiments have increased 37 percent in 10 years.

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