During demonstrations Thursday morning in front of UCLA Medical
Center laboratories and buildings, about 15 animal rights
protestors asked, “Hey UCLA, what do you say? How many
animals did you kill today?”
The demonstration was organized by University Students for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals who argue UCLA is wasting
taxpayers’ dollars on the inhumane and unethical treatment of
animals used in laboratory experiments.
“The university spends millions of dollars a year on
redundant health research,” said Peter Ryan, a third-year
civil and environmental engineering student, and one of the
organizers of the event. Ryan said money is being wasted because
research on animals has not created any medical advances and in
some cases has even delayed progress.
A statement from the UCLA media relations office claimed the
contrary, maintaining that medical research on animals at UCLA is
effective and important.
“UCLA’s world-class medical research program saves
lives and improves the quality of life for millions of people, and
animal research has played an essential role in many of our most
significant medical discoveries,” the statement read.
“Research involving laboratory animals has laid the
groundwork for numerous lifesaving procedures and medicines,
including cardiopulmonary resuscitation, open-heart surgery and the
polio vaccine,” the statement continued.
Ryan said he and two other students founded USETA this fall out
of a concern for how animals were treated in the laboratories.
“Every year, our tax dollars fund experiments that burn,
blind, poison, scald, electrocute, maim, paralyze, traumatize,
starve, inject with drugs, infect with disease and otherwise
torture animals,” read one of the fliers the group was
passing out.
Amanda Banks, president of the California Biomedical Research
Association, said researchers must pass inspection from a number of
institutions such as the National Institute of Health.
In order to facilitate any research on animals, they “must
prove that (they’ve) used all the alternative methods
available and that the research is needed and productive,”
Banks said.
“The UC system is one of the cleanest, and most regulated,
with state and local oversight, research facilities,” she
said.
There were only a handful of protestors at the demonstration,
and police, security and university administration easily
outnumbered them and followed the group as they chanted in front of
different buildings.
Some police officers stopped a truck as they drove into the
medical center, and a pizza delivery man was stopped before he
entered one of the buildings where the protestors were
demonstrating. In front of the MacDonald Medical Research
Laboratory, second-year biochemistry student David Nguyen, who was
not part of the event, couldn’t enter the building where he
worked because seven police officers on bicycles had blocked the
entrance as protestors chanted outside it.
“They said they were going to go to the labs,” said
Nancy Greenstein, director of police community services. “You
want to err on the side of caution.”
Greenstein said no one was arrested during the demonstration and
the group eventually disbanded.
Berky Nelson, director of student programming, said the amount
of security had to do with the aggressive nature of previous
protests with groups like USETA.
Nelson said he was worried about the demonstrators disrupting
research, causing vandalism and intimidating faculty, and that he
just wanted to “make certain everyone’s rights are
protected.”