Animal Research Protested

As laboratory scientists ducked and hurried by Monday, scores of animal rights activists clogged the entrance to a national researchers conference here, blocked traffic on a busy thoroughfare and clashed with police in minor skirmishes.

More than 120 protesters, some wearing black ski masks and carrying graphic posters showing experiments on animals, shouted insults at many of the 3,000 researchers and other medical professionals attending a weeklong conference of the American Assn. for Laboratory Animal Science (AALAS) at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Eight protesters were arrested--five of them on suspicion of assaulting police officers. An Atlanta woman taking part in the protest was hospitalized for minor injuries suffered when she was knocked to the pavement, police said.

The protesters also marched from Convention Center Way to Katella Avenue and briefly blocked midmorning traffic in the street’s eastbound lanes. But most of their energy was concentrated on the nervous scientists trying to enter the convention hall, and on the rows of Anaheim police officers posted at the hall’s entrances.

Inside, distracted scientists tried to put on a conference.

AALAS is an association for researchers, regulators and others who work with animal experimentation. The group’s leaders say its mission is to promote the most ethical and humane treatment possible for rodents, monkeys and other creatures used for research.

“We sort of want to say, ‘Hey, we’re the good guys, the advocates for the best treatment,’ ” said Lynn C. Anderson, the association’s president and a New Jersey laboratory director. “At the same time, we don’t feel we have to defend animals from big, bad, abusive scientists. There are none of those.”

Anderson said lab workers use animals only when necessary, most often to test the safety of a new drug or treatment, or to seek new advances in curing major diseases. She credits the “vital, appropriate and judicious” practice for shepherding the development of antibiotics, insulin treatments and vaccines for smallpox, polio and measles.

Her view was in sharp contrast to that of the protesters, who say animal experiments are cruel, unethical and of dubious scientific value.

Protest leaders said the biological differences between species are too great to consider the testing a true gauge for safety. Instead, they argue, the testing actually delays development of new drugs and treatment.

“What has animal research really done to help human health? Nothing,” said Dr. C. Ray Greek, a Kansas anesthesiologist. “It’s mythology.”

Greek challenged the conference speakers to a “reasoned debate” on the topic. But on Monday, the issues were argued mostly with shouts and shoving.

Some of the activists chose to stage a sit-in or join in chants of “Shame!” and “Murderers!” But others raced about to physically confront people leaving the conference.

At least one man attending the conference was spat on as he walked past a group of protesters, and other conference participants said they believed they were in physical danger as they walked a gantlet of insults and elbows.

Two of those arrested were young men who police said assaulted a woman leaving the conference.

The jostling brought some of the protesters into conflicts with the more than 50 police officers on hand, most of them wearing riot gear.

One of the officers who tried to hustle the woman away used pepper spray on several protesters. The officer later said he acted because he was worried about the crush of people coming toward him, but Joan Delehanty, a Seattle activist among the people sprayed, said the officer “sprayed generously and randomly.”

Another protester, Amanda Prentice of Atlanta, was hospitalized after complaining of a head injury. Protesters said Prentice was shoved to the ground by a police officer, but police spokesman Sgt. Joe Vargas said she probably fell because of the crowd pushing toward the police lines.