22 Are Arrested in Protest of Animal Research at UCLA

About 50 people staged a noontime sit-in outside the office of UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young on Monday as part of a national week of protests against the use of animals in medical research.

By the time the protest rally was broken up by campus police at 6:30 p.m., 22 demonstrators had been arrested. Twenty were charged with misdemeanor trespassing. Two others were charged with felony assault on a police officer.

The protesters, from the Los Angeles-based group called Last Chance for Animals, occupied a cramped reception area and part of the hallway on the second floor of Murphy Hall on the Westwood campus, displaying signs bearing gruesome photos allegedly showing animals that had been mutilated during research. Accompanying the photos were such slogans as: “Imagine having your body left to science while you’re still in it.”

“Young has chosen to ignore what we have been saying for years, that the university is furthering an animal Holocaust in the name of science,” said Jack Carone, spokesman for the group.

Young was out of the country on business. Other university officials accepted a letter from the demonstrators demanding the resignation of nine neuroscience researchers at UCLA, but stressed that no such action would be taken.

“In a sense, this is nothing new,” said UCLA spokesman Richard Elbaum. Over the last few years, UCLA has been the target of similar protests, including one last April in which members of Last Chance for Animals allegedly broke down a door of the UCLA Brain Research Institute and eight persons were arrested.

Anticipating demonstrations Monday and the rest of the week, UCLA doctors and their patients held a press conference earlier in the day to trumpet medical advances in combatting epilepsy and other neurological diseases which, they said, were obtained partly through experimentation on animals.

Protesters argued that researchers have made no direct link between results of animal experimentation and the possible affects on humans under the same experimental situations.

The 23 arrested protesters were taken to the campus police station. Those booked for investigation of misdemeanor trespassing were expected to be released on their own recognizance. The two booked for investigation of felony assault will be held until unspecified bail amounts are posted on their behalf, authorities said.

The protest seemed well-thought out. Demonstrators drove a motor home onto campus for use as a headquarters; group members communicated with each other on mobile telephones.

The last week in April traditionally has been a week of activism by groups that oppose use of animals in research experiments. The groups, who have billed this as “World Laboratory Animal Liberation Week,” are calling on the federal government and universities to stop animal experiments and instead use research money on other medical needs, including developing preventive medicine strategies.

The largest of the demonstrations around the country was outside the National Institutes of Health in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, Md. Police there arrested about 50 of the 200 demonstrators blocking a road. The NIH is the world’s largest source of financing for animal experimentation, protesters said.