A proposal by a team of UCLA researchers to study the social
effects of Ecstasy on vervet monkeys was a key battling point in a
protest held Thursday throughout the UCLA Medical Center area by a
small group of animal rights activists.
In conjunction with National Primate Liberation Week, the group
of about 15 activists gathered at the corner of Westwood Boulevard
and Le Conte Avenue just after noon, holding large posters with
images of monkeys during vivisection and other research
procedures.
The posters displayed slogans such as “This is not
research, it’s torture” and “Vivisection: Science
Gone Mad.” Members of various animal rights groups, including
the L.A.-based Last Chance for Animals and the Anti-Vivisection
Campaign, were among the protestors who marched along Westwood
Boulevard.
The protest did not focus on the use of primates in any specific
area of research, but the Ecstasy proposal became a hot discussion
topic as the event continued.
The proposal, called “Making Connections: MDMA Research on
the Mechanisms of Affiliation and Trust,” is intended as a
stepping stone to learning more about human social interaction. It
was submitted to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Studies by a group of UCLA researchers about a year ago.
The association is a non-profit research and educational
organization that helps scientists get funding and approval for
projects involving Ecstasy, psychedelic drugs and marijuana. So far
the researchers have not received any funding offers.
Anthropology Professor Alan Page Fiske, one of the main
researchers behind the proposal, said Ecstasy has many emotional
benefits, including making people feel euphoric and a providing a
greater sense of community with those around them. For that reason,
he said, it is important to study how the chemicals impact
people’s sociability.
“The biggest problems we have in the world are people not
trusting each other and not feeling a solidarity (and) feeling
distant,” Fiske said. “If we could understand the basis
of compassion and caring, that’s about the most important
thing human and biological sciences could do.”
Protesters argued that research on animals as a means to benefit
humans is a waste of time and money, saying the findings cannot
translate to humans because they are two different species.
“We’re different within our own species. How are you
going to go in an entirely different species (and do
research)?” said Chris DeRose, president of Last Chance for
Animals, a group he started 21 years ago.
The group of activists, proceeded by a string of bicycle-riding
university police officers, made stops at the Semel Institute for
Neuroscience and Human Behavior and the MacDonald Medical Research
Laboratory. The officers sat on their bikes in front of the
building entrances, blocking the protestors and interrupting the
flow of traffic in and out of the buildings.
The protesters were primarily concerned about the potential harm
that could be done to animals through research.
Devin Murphy, a member of Last Chance for Animals, described the
desire to see the effects of Ecstasy on primates as a
“totally sick curiosity.”
Both Murphy and DeRose advocated the use of clinical studies, or
observing and analyzing human patients, as a more accurate and
moral research method.
David Jentsch, an assistant professor of psychology and one of
the researchers behind the proposal, said clinical studies are
helpful in showing correlations, but not in finding why,
mechanistically, things happen.
“Our society expects me to provide them with facts with a
level of certainty. You can’t get that without mechanistic
studies in non-human species,” he said.