Monkey Madness at UCLA
Violent radicals aim to kill Jules Stein Eye Institute researchers who test on animals
In addition, Abrams recently changed UCLA policy regarding Freedom of Information Act requests. The university will no longer make public its medical research documents, according to UCLA vice chancellor for research Roberto Peccei.
Peccei revealed this bold, possibly unconstitutional decision after the L.A. Weekly asked about a “redacted report” that Vlasak had released to the media. The document, blacked out in several areas, including one section that detailed the pain levels animals endured, was a renewal application for Rosenbaum’s research into eye muscle control. Rosenbaum is trying to cure severely crossed eyes in humans — a debilitating condition that can also lead to blindness.
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Vlasak insists the experiments with rhesus monkeys and cats are unnecessary — a claim the vice chancellor meets with open disgust. “They’re always using these things in a way to hype it up!” Peccei says. “Let them take us to court for not providing the documents.”
Via e-mail, Vlasak retorts, “They obviously feel like they have to hide not only the details of what’s going on in their research labs, but now they are going to try to hide from the public, at a public institution no less. If they were not ashamed of what they are doing, they should be willing to openly display what is going on there.”
Peccei, who has heard midnight taunts outside his own home, says researchers continue their work undaunted, although an associate neurology professor, Dario Ringach, quit after last year’s botched bombing and plaintively wrote to animal-rights groups: “You win .?.?. please don’t bother my family anymore.”
Aside from the quickly vanishing Ringach, the vice chancellor says, “We’re bearing up pretty well,” and Peccei claims that recruiting talented researchers has not been a problem.
Well beyond L.A., medical researchers, disease victims’ groups, animal-rights activists, law-enforcement agencies and extremists are no doubt watching events unfold in Westwood. A possibly messy and tragic showdown is brewing.
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