Local News in Brief : Researchers Respond
With animal-rights groups devoting this week to protesting animal experimentation in biomedical facilities, several Los Angeles researchers countered by charging that their critics have caused $5.6 million worth of property damage and lengthy research delays.
Researchers and administrators from UCLA, Huntington Memorial Hospital, UC Davis and UC Irvine blamed animal-rights advocates for the theft of 627 laboratory animals over the last five years and an April, 1987, fire that destroyed a veterinary diagnostic laboratory at UC Davis.
Those protests cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in public money, the scientists said, and disrupted critical research into birth defects, heart disease, brain and spinal cord injuries and the effects of air pollution exposure.
Animal-rights activists have denied responsibility for the UC Davis fire.
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