5 Animal Rights Activists Arrested in Protest at UCI : Demonstration: They take over chancellor’s office, accusing university of refusing to allow independent monitoring of research experiments. School officials say there is such oversight.

Animal rights activists occupied the fifth-floor office of UC Irvine Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening on Wednesday afternoon for two hours in a protest that ended when five were arrested by campus police.

The activists, including a Long Beach emergency room physician, accused the university of refusing to allow independent monitoring of UCI research experiments they say are needlessly cruel to animals.

“This is not a valid way to conduct research. Computer models work better,” said Jennifer Miller, an activist with a group called Animal Rights Direct Action Coalition who left the chancellor’s office before police arrived.

The group issued a list of demands, including an end to experiments on monkeys conducted by Dr. Edward G. Jones, a UCI professor of anatomy and neurobiology studying neurological disorders that range from Alzheimer’s disease to epilepsy.

Jones was in Japan on Wednesday and could not be reached for comment.

“It’s absolute torture,” Miller said. “The people who test animals are doing it because they’ve got grants and they’re getting money for it.”

Wilkening, who was reported to be in meetings outside her office, refused to meet with the protesters, who occupied her office from about 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. University officials called the demonstrators extremists intent on banning all medical research involving animals, regardless of scientific merit.

“These protests are not about the abuse of animals. These protests are about stopping medical research, and that is not something the university is prepared to do,” said Linda Granell, director of communications for the UCI College of Medicine.

“There’s a difference between animal welfare and animal rights. Animal rights is almost a religious philosophy,” Granell said. “They believe that animals have the same rights as human beings. I don’t think that most reasonable people in this country believe that.”

University officials said Wilkening would not comment on the protest. But Granell said all university research experiments are monitored and approved by the campus Animal Research Ethics Committee and the federal government.

The five activists were arrested on suspicion of refusing to leave a public agency, a misdemeanor and released on their own recognizance. They are scheduled to appear in Municipal Court in Newport Beach within the next 30 days.

Arrested were Dr. Richard McLellan, an emergency room physician at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach; Gina Lynn, a secretary from Anaheim; Robin Schroader of Costa Mesa; Crescent Vellucci of Sacramento and his wife, Sheila Laracy.