An animal rights protester at UCLA flipped over his dog’s scarred ear to reveal a black tattoo that was used to identify him as a test animal in a cosmetics laboratory.

The dog walked with animal rights groups Progress for Science, In Defense of Animals, Los Angeles for Animals and Liberation Los Angeles on Friday for a protest against UCLA’s use of animals in research laboratories. Protesters chanted “UCLA has blood on their hands” and “It’s not science, it’s violence,” as they walked to Chancellor Gene Block’s office in Murphy Hall.

Cory Mac a’ Ghobhainn, a member of Progress for Science who helped organize the protest, said she hopes the demonstrations will pressure researchers to explore drug testing methods that do not involve animals. Researchers could use complex computer simulations of the body and pieces of human tissues instead of mice in preliminary drug tests, she said.

“These methods are the future of science and UCLA knows it,” Mac a’ Ghobhainn said. “We’re just asking them to join the 21st century.”

Nigel Maidment, the chair of UCLA Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, said UCLA is developing technologies that will help minimize animal discomfort or remove the need for animals altogether.

Protesters displayed signs such as “UCLA’s bioethics are stuck in the 1800s” and “UCLA supports animal torture” outside Block’s office. Block conducted research on animals prior to becoming chancellor.

UCLA spokesperson Katherine Alvarado said animal research at UCLA is held to the high standards of the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care, a nonprofit that promotes the humane treatment of animals in science.

UCLA has faced opposition from the animal rights community for years. Activists sent a package of razor blades that they claimed were AIDS-tainted to a researcher who used primates in his studies on schizophrenia and drug addiction in 2009.

Mac a’ Ghobhainn said Progress for Science does not condone violence against researchers.

“I can understand property damage if you’re rescuing animals, but violence as an intimidation tactic doesn’t do us any good,” she said.

Edythe London, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences who has used primates to study addiction, said she has been a target of protesters for years. Animal rights advocates from the Animal Liberation Front flooded her Westwood home in 2007.

London said protests like these discourage scientists from conducting potentially lifesaving animal research.

“Without animal research, we would never have some of the lifesaving treatments now available like penicillin, blood transfusion and kidney transplants,” she said.

Progress for Science has mainly protested UCLA researchers who perform experiments on nonhuman primates, Mac a’ Ghobhainn said. Michele Basso, who uses monkeys to study the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, is one of the UCLA professors the organization campaigns against.

Mac a’ Ghobhainn said she thinks Basso’s experimental use of primates is unnecessary because her research isn’t directly applicable to human health and does not have a concrete goal.

Basso said applying for grant money for animal research is highly competitive, which means that only the most impactful proposals are funded. She said each of her experiments have a specific hypothesis that she hopes will give insight into the cognitive impairments of individuals with Parkinson’s disease.

She said she works hard to minimize the number of animals used in her experiments and cares for those that are used.

“I can assure you that our animals receive better health care than many people here in Los Angeles,” she said.

If the technology were ready, Basso said that she would gladly use an alternative method in her research, like computer modeling. However, Basso said that technology to replace animal testing is not ready for researchers to use.

“Scientists really are the ones developing all these new techniques,” Basso said. “I don’t see the animal rights protesters doing any of this.”

Published by Teddy Rosenbluth

Rosenbluth is the assistant News editor for the Science and Health beat. She was previously a News contributor for the science and health beat. She is a third-year psychobiology student who loves learning about evolutionary biology and neuroscience.

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14 Comments

  1. Please document this claim in the photo caption: “Activists dropped an explosive package onto the car of a researcher who used primates in his studies on schizophrenia and drug addiction in 2009.” Thank you.

  2. I graduated from UCLA. I loved it there. Now, images of restrained and pained animals have polluted happy memories. According to USDA APHIS records, UCLA had 4 dogs, 11 macaques, 378 pigs (where?), 161 rabbits, 13 chinchilla, 268 gerbils, 47 guinea pigs, 281 “other animals”, 4 “other farm animals”, and 107 hamsters. APHIS records identify three categories: animals in experiments that cause no pain, animals in experiments that cause pain but it’s alleviated (meds, etc), and animals in experiments that cause pain and their pain is not alleviated (might interfere with results, etc). The 107 hamsters are in the latter category. I’ve heard the sound hamsters make when they’re hurt. They aren’t objects. Their cries aren’t the squeaking wheels on a cart that Descartes described 400 years ago.

    Relatedly, science itself has definitively proven that animals feel pain like we feel it, that they want their lives, that they have families and language, and that they are sentient. At this moment, when animals were recognized as sentient, animal experiments should’ve stopped. The pro-animal research community talks out of both sides of its mouth: animals are not objects, but we’re still going to use their bodies, their lives for our agenda. They are tools with which we will find cures to what ails humanity!

    Also, it’s hard to take the pro-animal research seriously in regard to human health when their focus always seems on curing disease. Where is same level of money, time, and enthusiasm given to preventing these diseases in the first place? Flip through any magazine or watch tv for awhile, and the ads for curing this or that are constant. There’s a lot of money involved in drugs to cure people. There’s not such money to be made in preventing people from getting sick in the first place. The Foundation for Biomedical Research has posters with pictures of anti-vivisection protesters and the caption “Thanks to animal research, they’ll be able to protest 23.5 years longer”. How much longer would every one live with serious preventative care? I know 10 or more people myself who died prematurely (half of them more than 23.5 yrs early) from preventable diseases. The cures that exist didn’t save them.

    Lastly, in response to UCLA Pro-Test’s big criticism that anti-vivisection posters and video are outdated: Why not put cameras in the labs so you can show UCLA students and the public what’s being done to the animals? If you’re comfortable with what’s happening in the labs, that animals are not suffering, and that the public interest is being well served, why the secrecy? Why has UCLA animal research (and all other research facilities) gone to great lengths and great expense to hide the vivariums and the vivisection? You’ll claim it’s fear of animal rights activists trespassing, so, just add cameras to the labs. The is an easy issue to resolve. Show what’s being done to the animals. Show the experiments done on the four dogs you have (or had in 2017, are they still alive?). Show the pain you’re inflicting on 107 innocent hamsters with no pain medicine given to them. Show the face of one of the 11 macaques you had in 2017. Tell her story. Was she living in the jungle with her family, then stolen by poor people, and sent to your lab (an environment she doesn’t understand, everything natural to her taken from her) where her body was used until she died from this use? Or, was she bred in a warehouse, never even once having a natural existence?

    Maybe, the pro-animal research community needs to add to the 3 R’s (reduce, replace, refine) that it touts as progress on this issue of animal experimentation:
    1. Reflect: Animals are sentient. They aren’t objects to be used. UCLA Bioethics are stuck in the 1800’s.
    2. Refocus: Many diseases are preventable. Where is equal enthusiasm for prevention?
    3. Reveal: Show the public the video of experiments done on animals. If they support it, once they’ve seen it (all of it), your argument is that much stronger.

  3. I graduated from UCLA. I loved it there. Now, images of restrained and pained animals have polluted happy memories. According to USDA APHIS records for 2017, UCLA had 4 dogs, 11 macaques, 378 pigs (where?), 161 rabbits, 13 chinchilla, 268 gerbils, 47 guinea pigs, 281 “other animals”, 4 “other farm animals”, and 107 hamsters. APHIS records identify three categories: animals in experiments that cause no pain, animals in experiments that cause pain but it’s alleviated (meds, etc), and animals in experiments that cause pain and their pain is not alleviated (might interfere with results, etc). The 107 hamsters are in the latter category. I’ve heard the sound hamsters make when they’re hurt. They aren’t objects. Their cries aren’t the squeaking wheels on a cart that Descartes described 400 years ago.

    Relatedly, science itself has definitively proven that animals feel pain like we feel it, that they want their lives, that they have families and language, and that they are sentient. At this moment, when animals were recognized as sentient, animal experiments should’ve stopped. The pro-animal research community talks out of both sides of its mouth: animals are not objects, but we’re still going to use their bodies, their lives for our agenda. They are tools with which we will find cures to what ails humanity!

    Also, it’s hard to take the pro-animal research seriously in regard to human health when their focus always seems on curing disease. Where is same level of money, time, and enthusiasm given to preventing these diseases in the first place? Flip through any magazine or watch tv for awhile, and the ads for curing this or that are constant. There’s a lot of money involved in drugs to cure people. There’s not such money to be made in preventing people from getting sick in the first place. The Foundation for Biomedical Research has posters with pictures of anti-vivisection protesters and the caption “Thanks to animal research, they’ll be able to protest 23.5 years longer”. How much longer would every one live with serious preventative care? I know 10 or more people myself who died prematurely (half of them more than 23.5 yrs early) from preventable diseases. The cures that exist didn’t save them. And, animal research will not find those cures in using bodies that are physiologically different than human bodies. Experiments done on animals fail 90% of the time. This is an “F”, right?

    Lastly, in response to UCLA Pro-Test’s big criticism that anti-vivisection posters and video are outdated: Why not put cameras in the labs so you can show UCLA students and the public what’s being done to the animals? If you’re comfortable with what’s happening in the labs, that animals are not suffering, and that the public interest is being well served, why the secrecy? Why has UCLA animal research (and all other research facilities) gone to great lengths and great expense to hide the vivariums and the vivisection? You’ll claim it’s fear of animal rights activists trespassing, so, just add cameras to the labs. The is an easy issue to resolve. Show what’s being done to the animals. Show the experiments done on the four dogs you have (or had in 2017, are they still alive?). Show the pain you’re inflicting on 107 innocent hamsters with no pain medicine given to them. Show the face of one of the 11 macaques you had in 2017. Tell her story. Was she living in the jungle with her family, then stolen by poor people, and sent to your lab (an environment she doesn’t understand, everything natural to her taken from her) where her body was used until she died from this use? Or, was she bred in a warehouse, never even once having a natural existence?

    Maybe, the pro-animal research community needs to add to the 3 R’s (reduce, replace, refine) that it touts as progress on this issue of animal experimentation:
    1. Reflect: Animals are sentient. They aren’t objects to be used. UCLA Bioethics are stuck in the 1800’s.
    2. Refocus: Many diseases are preventable. Where is equal enthusiasm for prevention?
    3. Reveal: Show the public the video of experiments done on animals. If they support it, once they’ve seen it (all of it), your argument is that much stronger.

  4. In the margin directly across from this article on anti-vivisection protests: : UCLA receives $69 million grant for biomedical translational research.

  5. Putting ethical concerns and compassion for non-human animals aside for a moment, animal experimentation and testing is scientifically bogus and is not the answer to the declining state of human health. Data from experiments on the various species of lab animals cannot be extrapolated between those species, let alone to humans. The vivisectors know this, which is why statements like, “The results of this protocol shows the data gleaned from this particular group of animal models and does not reflect reactions on human systems” appears at the end of most research articles in medical journals. Due to species specificity, data obtained using live animals, regarding chemicals and procedures are unreliable, at best, and scientific fraud, in general. Humans are not just large rats — the rate and route of metabolism, among many other physiological differences is not comparable. Just listen to the myriad TV ads for drugs. The admitted “side” effects for these drugs are far worse than the original problem. The ingredients and package insert warnings are alarming, but most people overlook all that in their frantic search for a magic pill — putting all faith in their white robed “health” provider. Then there is the fact that a disease ARTIFICIALLY recreated in a laboratory on a healthy animal is not the same disease which occurred SPONTANEOUSLY in a sick human. Disease is intimately related to the host’s immune system and general health condition. Looking at the human body as war zone instead of a precious garden to be lovingly tended to, is the dominant paradigm of the bio-medical/chemical/pharmaceutical industrial complex. It is entirely possible to prevent and reverse the growing number of degenerative diseases by taking responsibility for our own health and lives, through life-enhancing diet, lifestyle and environmental choices, instead of the poisons being inflicted upon us from the very same monolith that pretends to want to “cure” us. Animals are the innocent scapegoats for a cruel, unscientific and extremely lucrative enterprise, paid for with our tax dollars for automatically renewed government grants and well-meaning, but unenlightened, private donors. No matter how many millions of defenseless animals are maimed, tortured and killed, none of them hold the “cure” that, conveniently, never comes. Vivisection is white coat waste at its finest.

  6. My comment below was deleted because it was “detected as spam”. Here it is again UCLA research. It is not spam.

    I graduated from UCLA. I loved it there. Now, images of restrained and pained animals have polluted happy memories. According to USDA APHIS records for 2017, UCLA had 4 dogs, 11 macaques, 378 pigs (where?), 161 rabbits, 13 chinchilla, 268 gerbils, 47 guinea pigs, 281 “other animals”, 4 “other farm animals”, and 107 hamsters. APHIS records identify three categories: animals in experiments that cause no pain, animals in experiments that cause pain but it’s alleviated (meds, etc), and animals in experiments that cause pain and their pain is not alleviated (might interfere with results, etc). The 107 hamsters are in the latter category. I’ve heard the sound hamsters make when they’re hurt. They aren’t objects. Their cries aren’t the squeaking wheels on a cart that Descartes described 400 years ago.

    Relatedly, science itself has definitively proven that animals feel pain like we feel it, that they want their lives, that they have families and language, and that they are sentient. At this moment, when animals were recognized as sentient, animal experiments should’ve stopped. The pro-animal research community talks out of both sides of its mouth: animals are not objects, but we’re still going to use their bodies, their lives for our agenda. They are tools with which we will find cures to what ails humanity!

    Also, it’s hard to take the pro-animal research seriously in regard to human health when their focus always seems on curing disease. Where is same level of money, time, and enthusiasm given to preventing these diseases in the first place? Flip through any magazine or watch tv for awhile, and the ads for curing this or that are constant. There’s a lot of money involved in drugs to cure people. There’s not such money to be made in preventing people from getting sick in the first place. The Foundation for Biomedical Research has posters with pictures of anti-vivisection protesters and the caption “Thanks to animal research, they’ll be able to protest 23.5 years longer”. How much longer would every one live with serious preventative care? I know 10 or more people myself who died prematurely (half of them more than 23.5 yrs early) from preventable diseases. The cures that exist didn’t save them. And, animal research will not find those cures in using bodies that are physiologically different than human bodies. Experiments done on animals fail 90% of the time. This is an “F”, right?

    Lastly, in response to UCLA Pro-Test’s big criticism that anti-vivisection posters and video are outdated: Why not put cameras in the labs so you can show UCLA students and the public what’s being done to the animals? If you’re comfortable with what’s happening in the labs, that animals are not suffering, and that the public interest is being well served, why the secrecy? Why has UCLA animal research (and all other research facilities) gone to great lengths and great expense to hide the vivariums and the vivisection? You’ll claim it’s fear of animal rights activists trespassing, so, just add cameras to the labs. The is an easy issue to resolve. Show what’s being done to the animals. Show the experiments done on the four dogs you have (or had in 2017, are they still alive?). Show the pain you’re inflicting on 107 innocent hamsters with no pain medicine given to them. Show the face of one of the 11 macaques you had in 2017. Tell her story. Was she living in the jungle with her family, then stolen by poor people, and sent to your lab (an environment she doesn’t understand, everything natural to her taken from her) where her body was used until she died from this use? Or, was she bred in a warehouse, never even once having a natural existence?

    Maybe, the pro-animal research community needs to add to the 3 R’s (reduce, replace, refine) that it touts as progress on this issue of animal experimentation:
    1. Reflect: Animals are sentient. They aren’t objects to be used. UCLA Bioethics are stuck in the 1800’s.
    2. Refocus: Many diseases are preventable. Where is equal enthusiasm for prevention?
    3. Reveal: Show the public the video of experiments done on animals. If they support it, once they’ve seen it (all of it), your argument is that much stronger.

  7. My comment below was deleted because it was “detected as spam”. It is not spam.

    I graduated from UCLA. I loved it there. Now, images of restrained and pained animals have polluted happy memories. According to USDA APHIS records for 2017, UCLA had 4 dogs, 11 macaques, 378 pigs (where?), 161 rabbits, 13 chinchilla, 268 gerbils, 47 guinea pigs, 281 “other animals”, 4 “other farm animals”, and 107 hamsters. APHIS records identify three categories: animals in experiments that cause no pain, animals in experiments that cause pain but it’s alleviated (meds, etc), and animals in experiments that cause pain and their pain is not alleviated (might interfere with results, etc). The 107 hamsters are in the latter category. I’ve heard the sound hamsters make when they’re hurt. They aren’t objects. Their cries aren’t the squeaking wheels on a cart that Descartes described 400 years ago.

    Relatedly, science itself has definitively proven that animals feel pain like we feel it, that they want their lives, that they have families and language, and that they are sentient. At this moment, when animals were recognized as sentient, animal experiments should’ve stopped. The pro-animal research community talks out of both sides of its mouth: animals are not objects, but we’re still going to use their bodies, their lives for our agenda. They are tools with which we will find cures to what ails humanity!

    Also, it’s hard to take the pro-animal research seriously in regard to human health when their focus always seems on curing disease. Where is same level of money, time, and enthusiasm given to preventing these diseases in the first place? Flip through any magazine or watch tv for awhile, and the ads for curing this or that are constant. There’s a lot of money involved in drugs to cure people. There’s not such money to be made in preventing people from getting sick in the first place. The Foundation for Biomedical Research has posters with pictures of anti-vivisection protesters and the caption “Thanks to animal research, they’ll be able to protest 23.5 years longer”. How much longer would every one live with serious preventative care? I know 10 or more people myself who died prematurely (half of them more than 23.5 yrs early) from preventable diseases. The cures that exist didn’t save them. And, animal research will not find those cures in using bodies that are physiologically different than human bodies. Experiments done on animals fail 90% of the time. This is an “F”, right?

    Lastly, in response to UCLA Pro-Test’s big criticism that anti-vivisection posters and video are outdated: Why not put cameras in the labs so you can show UCLA students and the public what’s being done to the animals? If you’re comfortable with what’s happening in the labs, that animals are not suffering, and that the public interest is being well served, why the secrecy? Why has UCLA animal research (and all other research facilities) gone to great lengths and great expense to hide the vivariums and the vivisection? You’ll claim it’s fear of animal rights activists trespassing, so, just add cameras to the labs. The is an easy issue to resolve. Show what’s being done to the animals. Show the experiments done on the four dogs you have (or had in 2017, are they still alive?). Show the pain you’re inflicting on 107 innocent hamsters with no pain medicine given to them. Show the face of one of the 11 macaques you had in 2017. Tell her story. Was she living in the jungle with her family, then stolen by poor people, and sent to your lab (an environment she doesn’t understand, everything natural to her taken from her) where her body was used until she died from this use? Or, was she bred in a warehouse, never even once having a natural existence?

    Maybe, the pro-animal research community needs to add to the 3 R’s (reduce, replace, refine) that it touts as progress on this issue of animal experimentation:
    1. Reflect: Animals are sentient. They aren’t objects to be used. UCLA Bioethics are stuck in the 1800’s.
    2. Refocus: Many diseases are preventable. Where is equal enthusiasm for prevention?
    3. Reveal: Show the public the video of experiments done on animals. If they support it, once they’ve seen it (all of it), your argument is that much stronger.

  8. Most of the time, the truth about vivisection doesn’t reach the general public, although occasionally something gets through, including a recent article in Science magazine (“Study questions animal data underlying many clinical trials”).

    Vivisection has grown into a huge industry unto itself, with a multifaceted network connection with other major corporations, and even governments. It provides the built-in excuses for companies to release toxic chemicals into the environment, and direct delivery into human victims. Many of those companies (including ‘medical’ businesses) become involved in constructing “charities,” in which duped citizens are convinced to walk, run, bike, and whatever else, to raise more money for alleged cures. Millions taken in at every event, over many decades. In the meantime, the proven non-invasive cures are kept from mainstream access.

    In the last paragraph of the article, vivisector Michele Basso suggests that the issue is between “scientists” and “animal rights protesters,” and this is exactly what the beneficiaries of the billions want us to believe. The fact is, that many scientists (in my opinion, the REAL scientists) have been opposed to vivisection since it’s inception, not only on moral and ethical grounds (which is also important) but on scientific grounds.

    I’d like to keep on writing, but I feel another book coming on, which is not feasible in a comments section. I would urge readers to look up Dr. Vernon Coleman’s £250,000 challenge to vivisectors, which was distributed throughout their turf (no takers), and then read, for starters, “Vivisection or Science, A Choice To Make,” by Prof. Pietro Croce, “Naked Empress, or The Great Medical Fraud,” and “1,000 Doctors, and many more, Against Vivisection,” by Hans Ruesch. And learn more at People for Reason In Science and Medicine.

  9. My comment below was deleted because it was “detected as spam”. It is not spam.

    I graduated from UCLA. I loved it there. Now, images of restrained and pained animals have polluted happy memories. According to USDA APHIS records for 2017, UCLA had 4 dogs, 11 macaques, 378 pigs (where?), 161 rabbits, 13 chinchilla, 268 gerbils, 47 guinea pigs, 281 “other animals”, 4 “other farm animals”, and 107 hamsters. APHIS records identify three categories: animals in experiments that cause no pain, animals in experiments that cause pain but it’s alleviated (meds, etc), and animals in experiments that cause pain and their pain is not alleviated (might interfere with results, etc). The 107 hamsters are in the latter category. I’ve heard the sound hamsters make when they’re hurt. They aren’t objects. Their cries aren’t the squeaking wheels on a cart that Descartes described 400 years ago.

    Relatedly, science itself has definitively proven that animals feel pain like we feel it, that they want their lives, that they have families and language, and that they are sentient. At this moment, when animals were recognized as sentient, animal experiments should’ve stopped. The pro-animal research community talks out of both sides of its mouth: animals are not objects, but we’re still going to use their bodies, their lives for our agenda. They are tools with which we will find cures to what ails humanity!

    Also, it’s hard to take the pro-animal research seriously in regard to human health when their focus always seems on curing disease. Where is same level of money, time, and enthusiasm given to preventing these diseases in the first place? Flip through any magazine or watch tv for awhile, and the ads for curing this or that are constant. There’s a lot of money involved in drugs to cure people. There’s not such money to be made in preventing people from getting sick in the first place. The Foundation for Biomedical Research has posters with pictures of anti-vivisection protesters and the caption “Thanks to animal research, they’ll be able to protest 23.5 years longer”. How much longer would every one live with serious preventative care? I know 10 or more people myself who died prematurely (half of them more than 23.5 yrs early) from preventable diseases. The cures that exist didn’t save them. And, animal research will not find those cures in using bodies that are physiologically different than human bodies. Experiments done on animals fail 90% of the time. This is an “F”, right?

    Lastly, in response to UCLA Pro-Test’s big criticism that anti-vivisection posters and video are outdated: Why not put cameras in the labs so you can show UCLA students and the public what’s being done to the animals? If you’re comfortable with what’s happening in the labs, that animals are not suffering, and that the public interest is being well served, why the secrecy? Why has UCLA animal research (and all other research facilities) gone to great lengths and great expense to hide the vivariums and the vivisection? You’ll claim it’s fear of animal rights activists trespassing, so, just add cameras to the labs. The is an easy issue to resolve. Show what’s being done to the animals. Show the experiments done on the four dogs you have (or had in 2017, are they still alive?). Show the pain you’re inflicting on 107 innocent hamsters with no pain medicine given to them. Show the face of one of the 11 macaques you had in 2017. Tell her story. Was she living in the jungle with her family, then stolen by poor people, and sent to your lab (an environment she doesn’t understand, everything natural to her taken from her) where her body was used until she died from this use? Or, was she bred in a warehouse, never even once having a natural existence?

    Maybe, the pro-animal research community needs to add to the 3 R’s (reduce, replace, refine) that it touts as progress on this issue of animal experimentation:
    1. Reflect: Animals are sentient. They aren’t objects to be used. UCLA Bioethics are stuck in the 1800’s.
    2. Refocus: Many diseases are preventable. Where is equal enthusiasm for prevention?
    3. Reveal: Show the public the video of experiments done on animals. If they support it, once they’ve seen it (all of it), your argument is that much stronger.

    rosyrobyn
    rosyrobyn 9 hours ago
    In the margin directly across from this article on anti-vivisection protests: : UCLA receives $69 million grant for biomedical translational research.

    2 Edit View in discussion
    rosyrobyn
    rosyrobyn 9 hours ago
    Detected as spam Thanks, we’ll work on getting this corrected.
    I graduated from UCLA. I loved it there. Now, images of restrained and pained animals have polluted happy memories. According to USDA APHIS records for 2017, UCLA had 4 dogs, 11 macaques, 378 pigs (where?), 161 rabbits, 13 chinchilla, 268 gerbils, 47 guinea pigs, 281 “other animals”, 4 “other farm animals”, and 107 hamsters. APHIS records identify three categories: animals in experiments that cause no pain, animals in experiments that cause pain but it’s alleviated (meds, etc), and animals in experiments that cause pain and their pain is not alleviated (might interfere with results, etc). The 107 hamsters are in the latter category. I’ve heard the sound hamsters make when they’re hurt. They aren’t objects. Their cries aren’t the squeaking wheels on a cart that Descartes described 400 years ago.

    Relatedly, science itself has definitively proven that animals feel pain like we feel it, that they want their lives, that they have families and language, and that they are sentient. At this moment, when animals were recognized as sentient, animal experiments should’ve stopped. The pro-animal research community talks out of both sides of its mouth: animals are not objects, but we’re still going to use their bodies, their lives for our agenda. They are tools with which we will find cures to what ails humanity!

    Also, it’s hard to take the pro-animal research seriously in regard to human health when their focus always seems on curing disease. Where is same level of money, time, and enthusiasm given to preventing these diseases in the first place? Flip through any magazine or watch tv for awhile, and the ads for curing this or that are constant. There’s a lot of money involved in drugs to cure people. There’s not such money to be made in preventing people from getting sick in the first place. The Foundation for Biomedical Research has posters with pictures of anti-vivisection protesters and the caption “Thanks to animal research, they’ll be able to protest 23.5 years longer”. How much longer would every one live with serious preventative care? I know 10 or more people myself who died prematurely (half of them more than 23.5 yrs early) from preventable diseases. The cures that exist didn’t save them. And, animal research will not find those cures in using bodies that are physiologically different than human bodies. Experiments done on animals fail 90% of the time. This is an “F”, right?

    Lastly, in response to UCLA Pro-Test’s big criticism that anti-vivisection posters and video are outdated: Why not put cameras in the labs so you can show UCLA students and the public what’s being done to the animals? If you’re comfortable with what’s happening in the labs, that animals are not suffering, and that the public interest is being well served, why the secrecy? Why has UCLA animal research (and all other research facilities) gone to great lengths and great expense to hide the vivariums and the vivisection? You’ll claim it’s fear of animal rights activists trespassing, so, just add cameras to the labs. The is an easy issue to resolve. Show what’s being done to the animals. Show the experiments done on the four dogs you have (or had in 2017, are they still alive?). Show the pain you’re inflicting on 107 innocent hamsters with no pain medicine given to them. Show the face of one of the 11 macaques you had in 2017. Tell her story. Was she living in the jungle with her family, then stolen by poor people, and sent to your lab (an environment she doesn’t understand, everything natural to her taken from her) where her body was used until she died from this use? Or, was she bred in a warehouse, never even once having a natural existence?

    Maybe, the pro-animal research community needs to add to the 3 R’s (reduce, replace, refine) that it touts as progress on this issue of animal experimentation:
    1. Reflect: Animals are sentient. They aren’t objects to be used. UCLA Bioethics are stuck in the 1800’s.
    2. Refocus: Many diseases are preventable. Where is equal enthusiasm for prevention?
    3. Reveal: Show the public the video of experiments done on animals. If they support it, once they’ve seen it (all of it), your argument is that much stronger.

    1. Hey @rosyrobyn:disqus! I was wondering if by chance there was link for that USDA APHIS record about how many animals UCLA experiments on every year?

  10. Where are all the vivisectors’ comments? Have you nothing to say to defend what you do?

  11. Oh my goodness where does one start? Another biased Daily Bruin article, no doubt overseen by the researchers themselves as always. There is so much evidence out there now not only on how invalid the animal model is but more to the point what a lying, greedy institution UCLA is when it comes to animal experimentation. From the time the lab workers actually physically tried to bar USDA inspectors from entering the labs and being fined for it to the bullying of not only activists but staff and students by the Chancellor’s office at the behest of the vivisectors UCLA has only ever showed itself to be deceitful and despicable . The truth is stranger than fiction when it comes to the moral depravity of UCLA and the vivisectors it houses. And as for Basso’s rubbish that research grants are highly competitive is almost laughable really. $16 billion annually gets metered out by the NIH alone for animal research, hardly a drop in the bucket. You generally just have to mention Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s and it’s a green light to do whatever you want to an animal. As for her “hope” to find a cure, we want more than your “hope” Ms. Basso because my tax-dollars are going on your cruel experiments and we require more than “hope.” As do the millions of people suffering from these diseases while you waste our money away inflicting pain and suffering on hundreds of sentient beings and getting paid well for it.

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