Group Protests Use of Animals in Research

Carrying placards and a few gruesome pictures, about 50 protesters walked the sidewalks outside of the UC San Diego Medical Center Saturday to demonstrate against the use of animals for medical research.

UCSD was targeted for the protest because the school, along with the San Diego chapter of the American College of Surgeons, had scheduled a seminar this week that required 36 dogs for demonstrations of surgical techniques. The seminar was part of a weeklong “assembly in surgery” conference scheduled to start Monday.

A school spokesman said the dogs, which were unclaimed at the county’s animal shelter and destined to die, would be anesthetized during the procedure and then killed by an increased level of anesthetic after the demonstration.

But the seminar was canceled Tuesday after its instructor, Dr. A.R. Moossa, UCSD’s top surgeon, received a death threat after he appeared on a television newscast Monday night to explain the procedure. A man called Moossa’s office and threatened to “put a bullet in his head” if he taught the seminar.

The cancellation was believed to be the first time an experiment or demonstration using laboratory animals in California state schools had to be called off because of threats and pressure from animal rights groups, according to an official of the California Biomedical Research Assn.

The cancellation also seemed to take the edge off of Saturday’s protest, as gray-haired women, bearded men, middle-aged women and a few “punkers” walked outside of the research laboratory at 130 Dickinson St., a block east of the medical center.

“They have postponed the seminar,” said Shura Chenkin, a legal secretary from Oceanside and one of the organizers of the demonstration. “They only have postponed it because of the alleged death threat. We wanted them to agree that it is a frivolous waste of animal life, to cut up animals. . . .”

Chenkin, co-coordinator of the San Diego chapter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said some demonstrators had come from Los Angeles, and she said everyone intended to be peaceful so people would “hear about us as something other than the lunatic fringe.”

“We do regret the fact that Dr. Moossa had a death threat on his life; we had nothing to do with that,” she added.

The secret Animal Liberation Front, an extremist animal rights group, has claimed responsibility for a number of bomb hoaxes, including the Jan. 2 bomb scare at The Broadway department store in Fashion Valley.

A San Diego police sergeant and several UCSD security agents kept a close watch on the protesters Saturday. Most of the agents planned to guard the laboratory until late Saturday, said Victor Medrano of UCSD security .

The protesters walked the sidewalks and, for only a few minutes, mustered a chant. One small girl wore a homemade sandwich sign that said, “Let My Puppy Live.” Several posters included the cover from the Jan. 13 issue of Parade Magazine, which showed a sad-eyed dog and the question: “Should They Have Rights?”

As the demonstration was winding down, police detained, questioned and released one protester, a police spokesman said. The man apparently was detained for giving police officers a false name, said another animal rights activist.

UCSD spokesman Paul West said Saturday that Moossa’s seminar, a demonstration of how to use staples instead of sutures during surgery, was definitely canceled. Some animal rights advocates speculated that UCSD, which planned to charge 70 doctors $300 each for the seminar, would demonstrate the techniques secretly, rather than lose the money.