IRVINE : Vivisection Foes Mount UCI Protest

About 60 members of Orange County People for Animals, some holding pictures showing such sights as a live cat with a thick metal probe in its head, gathered on the UC Irvine campus Wednesday afternoon to protest vivisection.

They decried the research of UCI’s Dr. Edward G. Jones, whose work involves “sewing a monkey’s eyelid shut and sitting back and watching it for a year,” according to OCPA founder Ava Park.

Jones, of the university’s department of anatomy and neurobiology, could not be reached for comment, but Leonard Kitzes of the same department called the pictures the group displayed “quite an intentional misrepresentation of what we do” and said all research at UCI is in accord with the National Institutes of Health guidelines and is supervised by a campus veterinarian.

That was no consolation for the group, which included several toddlers and a great-grandmother. They walked from the edge of campus to the chancellor’s office, where Park gave an emotional speech.

“You can be assured some people will choose not to do this work because you told the truth today,” she told protesters. In a letter to UCI Chancellor Laurel Wilkening, she asked for a meeting. Wilkening did not attend the protest.

Then she led the group through the campus, where students eyed the pictures with horror.

“That’s nasty stuff,” said one person as a protester walked past with a picture of a monkey with metal rods and bars wedged into its head.

Park said the pictures, for which her group spent $800, came from “various sources,” but would not confirm that they represented work done in UCI labs.

She said that following federal guidelines in such research is “of little comfort to the dozens of monkeys whose eyes are being sewn shut.”

Kitzes said research on monkeys is “a tiny portion” of his department’s work--as little as a tenth of 1%.

Park, 39, became involved with animal rights in 1986 when she met a UCI medical student who took her to his lab. She saw live animals immobilized in metal vises as part of procedures done on them, she said.

She was so horrified that she immediately stopped wearing leather goods and eating meat, and two years later founded the group. Today, she said, she spends most of her time working for the group for no salary, and the rest running a small, private business.

UCI spokeswoman Linda Granell said that few students joined the protest because they understand that using animals is important in the work of research institutions such as UCI.