Animal rights protesters gathered on Monday at Meyerhoff Park to call for the suspension of several UCLA researchers who did not comply with federal guidelines on animal research.
Stop Animal Exploitation Now!, which organized the protest, said in a press release that it wrote a letter last week to UCLA Chancellor Gene Block urging him to suspend nine researchers for their misconduct. There have been at least 19 reports of noncompliance from UCLA researchers from December 2012 to June 2013, the organization said.
The organization acquired reports of noncompliance that UCLA submitted to the National Institutes of Health by filing records requests under the Freedom of Information Act, said Michael Budkie, co-founder and executive director of Stop Animal Exploitation Now!
UCLA’s self-reported violations include depriving animals of food and water without approval and injecting tumors into mice after the protocol had expired, according to the organization’s documents.
In a statement on Tuesday, UCLA said its officials identified all of those violations and proactively reported them to the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare.
Dr. James S. Economou, the vice chancellor for research at UCLA, wrote to the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare when reporting these violations that UCLA has taken actions against noncompliance, such as stopping the unapproved work and in some cases retraining researchers, according to documents sent from Stop Animal Exploitation Now! to the Daily Bruin.
The university said that none of the reports resulted in fines or penalties from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health’s parent agency, and that UCLA takes all noncompliance issues seriously.
Julia Orr, the spokeswoman for Stop Animal Exploitation Now!, said the organization is targeting UCLA in its protests because it believes the university has shown a pattern of noncompliance. In December 2010, UCLA’s animal research laboratory received a warning for animal rights violations for acts such as not providing enough supervision over those in charge of handling animals. UCLA said it promptly corrected those violations.
The organization has held multiple protests on campus in past years to protest animal research at UCLA, saying that it is ineffective and inhumane. The group also filed a lawsuit in December against the UC Board of Regents, demanding that UCLA release documents regarding its animal use in research.
In December, UCLA declined to release the requested documents, saying that releasing such information has endangered researchers in the past.
The lawsuit is ongoing, Budkie said.
Compiled by Jeong Park, Bruin senior staff.
As a UCLA graduate, I personally disagree with the actions of animal rights radicals who seek to cause problems for researchers and officials at UCLA. Consider that these animal activists would have a disagreement with ANY animal research activity because that is a significant aspect of their belief system. Therefore, as long as the UCLA officials have done what is appropriate in this regard, it makes no sense to seriously consider any requests by these radicals to suspend any researchers.
I’m glad this issue is getting coverage. UCLA needs to comply with regulations and release these documents to the public. If they’re in compliance there’s no reason they should be unwilling to do this.
Nazis used to do research without caring about children. The animals are now the children. All animals have emotions and fear. I cant believe people condoning torture disguised as research.
Obviously, Arman, you have never heard of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, which states: “Medical research involving human subjects must conform to generally accepted scientific principles, be based on a thorough knowledge of the scientific literature, other relevant sources of information, and adequate laboratory and, as appropriate, animal experimentation. The welfare of animals used for research must be respected.” In other words, Hitler authorized experimentation on humans WITHOUT basing it on a thorough knowledge of scientific principles, much of which is based on basic research first done in a lab and humanely, as appropriate, in laboratory animals. Most educated people realize that drug therapies, medical treatments, and surgical procedures don’t just appear magically like a Wonka Bar from Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. They have to be tested, ethically and humanely, in a living system BEFORE you can even fathom putting them into a human subject….even if you step up to the plate and volunteer your body for a medical experiment for an untested and untried drug, therapy, or surgical approach, the medical professionals could not oblige…thanks to the atrocities Hitler had his “medical professionals” inflict on prisoners in his concentration camps, and the agreement that noble people from around the world reached to prevent such atrocities in the future. They also had the forethought to make sure that when animals are used for these preliminary experiments, they are appropriate, and incorporate humane principles, such as the use of sterile technique, anesthetics, analgesics, and strict regulatory oversight. I hope you and your loved ones never have to receive medical treatment of any kind, because it would present an ethical dilemma for you to accept such interventions with your mindset – or have you even thought that far ahead? Do you/your loved ones simply suffer and die so as not to be hypocrites to your belief system, or do you/they benefit from medical advances to promote your/their health, as well as that of your pet’s and the world’s wildlife. Yes, that is right Arman, animals, both wild and captive, benefit from knowledge gained in carefully planned and executed experiments! Many a species in threat of extinction has been saved through knowledge of advanced reproductive techniques, etc. that were gained from medical research in animals. So before you start condemning the amazing advances medical researchers around the world have made to prolong your life, think how it will impact you, your mother, your sister, your girlfriend, etc. to deny yourself that option. You may be young and invincible now, but all it takes is getting hit by a car, being told you have cancer, or watching a loved one wither from Parkinson’s to say, Yes, please treat me/them….I don’t want to die/suffer/be disabled.
“Advocate for research”, there is a major flaw in your argument. You first point out that “Hitler authorized experimentation on humans WITHOUT basing it on a thorough knowledge of scientific principles” and then you go on to say that even if a person did consent, the medical professionals would be prevented from testing on a human. So are you saying that just because that is how the scientific process currently works, that it is therefore morally and ethically acceptable? Clearly, by your first point, the reason testing on humans is not allowed is because of Hitler, who was not following any real scientific principles. How does that equate to the idea that therefore testing cannot be performed on consenting humans, even if it is performed in a truly scientific manner, when the results of such human testing would be undeniably more accurate and more useful than animal testing?
The point many of us are making is not that testing has no benefits, but that it would be even more beneficial if done on humans. For us to not take advantage of scientific advancements previously gained through cruel animal testing, would be for the animals to have died in vain. And that is exactly what we do not want. However, that does not mean that it should be acceptable in any manner for cruel animal testing to continue, when there are more ethical and better methods (human testing) available. Just because animal testing is currently allowed and human testing is not, does not mean that things should stay that way. Isn’t one of the main endeavours of science to progress our understanding of the world around us? Why, then, would you not open your mind to the idea that animals have just as much right to be here and to live a long and full life as us humans do? Do you enjoy causing animal suffering?
Animal rights ADVOCATES are not radicals. Once again, just another way someone who is either brainwashed or in somebody’s pocket tries to discredit a social justice issue. People who marched on Washington D.C for civil rights were not radicals, they were speaking up for the truth and for change against oppression. Know your facts about vivisection, step outside your UCLA loving bubble for a moment and look at this issue thoughtfully. As a former student you were taught to open your eyes and your mind to the world around you. There is a financial motivation for what is happening in that department, not scientific advancement. It’s barbaric, wasteful, useless, and ethically egregious to experiment on our non-human animal equals. If you can’t find the compassion inside yourself, at least be educated on the topic.
Animal rights group = people suffering from ARPD (Animal Rights Personality Disorder)… i.e., no one should be listening to their demented rants. Members of these organizations often additionally suffer from cognitive dissonance and related issues. Hold the line UCLA – appropriate penalties have already been applied.
Animal rights people have compassion, an admirable quality which you lack. Develop a soul, a conscience. Inflicting pain, suffering, and death upon other sentient beings is just plain wrong! People who abuse animals and those people who approve of it (like you) are more likely to abuse people. Everybody knows that.
It’s easy to shift the focus or attempt to shift it to the “animal rights” activists as several of the previous comments have attempted to do, and try and minimize the nature of these violations that have occurred. I am not swayed or fooled by these comments and would guess that these folks who are posting this view have some sort of tie to the research or the researchers. If the research is something to be proud of UCLA, why not let several experts like me in primates and primate housing and enrichment and additionally in scientific protocol, in the lab to monitor the research and the researchers and see the monkeys and their housing situation and overall conditions. If they these independent observers agree that nothing seems amiss then we can all be happy. Seems to me if there is nothing to hide in the documents it cannot hurt to release them. If the lab is proud of its work and there is nothing to be embarrassed about or concerned about, let us and if not us then independent experts in to the labs to observe and evaluate it.
Everything I’ve read states, unequivocally, that research on other species of animals rarely leads to significant or accurate findings for humans. The failure rate must be very high indeed, if these scientists can’t remember to feed or water the animals they are using. It seems these labs are run by the most deranged human beings I can imagine. Their noncompliance is not surprising. Their ability to do science should be questioned.
UCLA is no better or worse than any other institution sucking at the public teat in the name of $cience. The people who experiment on animals are cut from the same bolt of cloth as the people who have always experimented on animals and unsuspecting and non-consenting humans. They don’t have an iota of concern for the suffering of others. Its all about money and power. It is worth noting that around the world, teachers, engineers, doctors, and nurses volunteer their time to help people in need, but one never reads of a volunteer vivisector; they are too busy running off on Caribbean junkets that pretend to be scientific conferences. If the public knew the truth, they’d tar and feather the people at NIH who approve the lion’s share of the money that pay for this dead-end terrible cruelty.
If we cannot trust the educated professional researcher to do their job in compliance with the law, how can we trust the results of their work? Allowing them complete control over the life and well being on an animal gives them a great responsibility that perhaps they should not be granted.
Perhaps? WTF?
Animal testing has no place in our advanced society. We need to move on from this cruel practice. All living creatures deserve a life without pain and suffering.
At a minimum, researchers with violations should be suspended. The inhumane treatment that these sentient beings suffer at the hands of researchers is unethical. All one need do to understand this is to imagine exchanging places with the animal, and the fear and pain that they experience will be clear.
In
the best of circumstances, animal research is scientifically questionable
because it cannot be predictive, making generalization of the results found in
animals to humans very, very precarious. Even with perfect laboratory
technique, and meticulous treatment of the animals, the stress inherent in
laboratory conditions has been found to have physiological concomitants, and it
thereby alters the data, producing highly unreliable results. When, as in the
case at UCLA, the treatment of the animals is poor, i.e., out of compliance
with the Animal Welfare Act, and their health is compromised by inadequate
treatment based on ignorance and apathy, then the results of these experiments
are, frankly, worthless. Experimenters who produce such dangerous data should
be suspended and barred from participating in future animal research, and the
scientific articles which derive from this corrupt data should be withdrawn,
with clear announcements that clinicians or other scientists should ignore
them. If these laboratories cannot successfully maintain decent animal care,
how can we have the confidence that any results from these laboratories are valid?
These laboratories should be closed down, and replaced with other laboratories
that perform scientifically valid research, such as the many so-called “alternatives”
(really improvements) to animal experimentation.
Murry J. Cohen, M.D.
I respectfully request that UCLA release all the animals you have in experiments right now to animal sanctuaries and have SAEN oversee this process.
I hold your college in high esteem. However, I cannot stand by while these animals are experimented on.
My tax dollars are at work on these experiments that are 90% inaccurate. The results do not translate to humans, the FDA reports that many of these results / tests fail in humans.
I have seen the videos of what goes on in labs. I have spoken with SAEN about what goes in labs and I do not want these experiments to go on, especially when there is a more accurate alternative like Organovo which can grow human tissues.
I have heard that one professor say: “Don’t worry about it. The results will be thrown out anyways but you will make a name for yourself and be published.
Incidentally, Andres Forgacs does have a Bachelors of Arts from Harvard University and his company has been recognized by MIT technology review on its TR50 list of the most innovative companies of 2012.
This is the future of testing.
Thank you,
Laura Sanchez
http://www.organovo.com
Andras Forgacs, Co-founder and Chief Executive
Andras is an entrepreneur and venture investor in technology and life science. He co-founded Modern Meadow in 2011. Previously, he had also co-founded Organovo, a leader in tissue engineering which pioneered the use of 3D bio-printing to create human tissue for a range of medical applications. Organovo’s bio-printer was named one of the top inventions of 2010 by Time Magazine and the company was recognized by MIT Technology Review on its TR50 list of most innovative companies for 2012.
Andras also served as Managing Director with Richmond Global, an international technology-focused venture fund. Previously, Andras was a consultant in the New York office of McKinsey & Company focused on biopharma and private equity. Earlier, he was a founding member of Citigroup’s corporate and investment banking e-commerce group where he led a team that developed award winning financial technology products and advised large cap corporate clients on a range of corporate finance challenges.
He is also co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of the international non-profit Resolution Project. Andras is a Kauffman Fellow with the Center for Venture Education and a Term Member with the Council on Foreign Relations. Andras holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts with honors from Harvard University.
Gabor Forgacs, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Gabor Forgacs is a theoretical physicist turned bioengineer turned innovator and entrepreneur. He is the George H. Vineyard Professor of Biological Physics at the University of Missouri-Columbia, the Executive and Scientific Director of the Shipley Center for Innovation at Clarkson University and scientific founder of Organovo, Inc. and Modern Meadow, Inc.
He was trained as a theoretical physicist at the Roland Eotvos University, Budapest, Hungary and the Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics, Moscow, USSR. He also has a degree in biology. His research interests span from topics in theoretical physics to physical mechanisms in early embryonic development.
He is the co-author of the celebrated text in the field, “Biological Physics of the Developing Embryo” (Cambridge University Press, 2005) that discusses the fundamental morphogenetic mechanisms evident in early development. These mechanisms are being applied to building living structures of prescribed shape and functionality using bioprinting, a novel tissue engineering technology he pioneered. He is the author of over 160 peer-reviewed scientific articles and 5 books.
He has been recognized by numerous awards and citations. In particular, he was named as one of the “100 most innovative people in business in 2010” by FastCompany.
There is no discovery that is a good discovery if it comes from treating them inhumanely. The insensitivity that often is suffered by researchers after years of cutting up sentient creatures has to be curtailed. It is wrong and the results often unreliable. And as most animal research is unnecessary and only continues based on grants and greed, the act becomes unconscionable. And that most diseases that this cruel and unreasonable research tries to find cures for often is the result of negative human behavior makes this unacceptable and WRONG! And to the poster’s comment below comparing much of this animal research to Nazi science, I must agree. As the Nazi didn’t give a damn if the Jew felt pain, it is the same with the disregard shown by those who use animals today. IT MUST STOP!!!!!
Gee whiz, if they didn’t bend and break the rules their researchers wouldn’t be at risk. Stop putting the animals through experiments. Change is difficult to choose to do. USLA, you have a choice before you right now. Do the ethical thing. Do the right thing. Change you S O P. and release the records.
Animal experimenters have inflicted all kinds of imaginable and unimaginable pain to millions of animals every year in the name of science without anesthesia, wasting billions of taxpayers’ monies. These would be crimes if performed by ordinary people. All this tinkering on animals should end, and many doctors agree.
“Animal experimentation is fallacious, useless, expensive, and furthermore, cruel.”
G. Tamino, Congressman and researcher at the University of Padua, Italy.
“Vivisection is barbaric, useless, and a hindrance to scientific progress. …There are, in fact, only two categories of doctors and scientists who are not opposed to vivisection: those who don’t know enough about it, and those who make money from it.”
Dr. Werner Hartinger, 1988/89, surgeon of thirty years, West Germany
“I agree that for the benefit of medical science, vivisection has to be stopped. There are lots of reasons: the most important is that it is simply misleading, and both the past and present testify to that.”
Professor Salvatore Rocca Rossetti, surgeon and professor of urology at the University of Turin, cit. Ray and Jean Greek, Specious Science (New York/London: Continuum, 2002), p.169.
“The assumption that an animal species can stand as a reliable model for human biological reactions amounts to playing Russian Roulette with the patient’s life.”
Dr Claude Reiss, DLRM Newsletter, No.9, Autumn 2002.
“Why am I against vivisection? The most important reason is because it’s bad science, producing a lot of misleading and confusing data which pose hazards to human health.”
Dr. Roy Kupsinel, M.D., 1988, medical magazine editor, USA.
“Conclusions drawn from animal research, when applied to human beings, are likely to delay progress, mislead, and do harm to the patient. Vivisection, or animal experimentation, should be abolished.”
Dr. Moneim Fadali, M.D., 1987, F.A.C.S., Diplomat American Board of Surgery and American Board of Thoracic Surgery, UCLA faculty, Royal College of Surgeons of Cardiology, Canada.
It is a fact that animals feel both mental and physical pain. It is also a fact that human beings are a subcategory of the larger group “animals” (as anyone who understands science and genetics can attest to). In the same way that it is wrong to conduct these types of experiments on fellow humans, (whether they have consented or not, but especially if they have NOT consented), it also wrong to conduct these experiments on our fellow animals who have not, and cannot possibly consent. End of story.
But of course there’s also tons of research out there that shows how ineffective and unnecessary most of these animal experiments really are. Even if you think you have some misguided ethical/moral justification for why animal experiments are acceptable, they still don’t do any good. The scientific community would do much better to replace animal cruelty and torture with testing on humans who can fully understand the possible risks and benefits, and who can make an intelligent decision of whether the risks are worth it for their consent. Humans can also better communicate the results of how they feel during and after any testing, and can communicate any other long term effects or things they noticed about the testing. This makes the testing so much more effective, and even more so because you would already know that the results apply to humans. It would also save TONS of time and money that is currently wasted on animal experiments.
Also… While there are tons of awful stories about all these animal tests out there, there are also many stories about people who are dying but can’t get some experimental drug that seems to be working for others, and who would gladly consent to whatever testing to get the life-saving drug or to help find a cure.
Food for thought. Why force unconsenting animals to participate in testing that some people would gladly consent to, which would save both precious time and prescious funding money in the scientific community?
Pseudo scientists torture innocent animals in laboratories usually at tax-payer expense with very little if anything to show for it. Satanists and serial killers also torture animals. Stop doing it. There must be a better way.
UCLA has been deceiving the public about their animal labs for years. In the ’90’s, they had media come out to show them their clean & humane treatment of their laboratory animals but the very next day, during World Lab Animal Week, animal advocates broke into a different lab in the same building that was anything BUT clean & humane. And even though the vivisectors forced the former NIH Director to redraw this comment he made at the Scientific Review Management Board Meeting in June 2013, Dr. Zerhouni did say it & he was being honest. “We have moved away from studying human disease in humans. We all drank the Kool-Aid on that one, me included. With the ability to knock in or knock out any gene in a mouse—which “can’t sue us, researchers have over-relied on animal data. The problem is that it hasn’t worked, and it’s time we stopped dancing around the problem…We need to refocus and adapt new methodologies for use in humans to understand disease biology in humans.”