IDA PROTESTERS “GO APE” OVER PRIMATE CRUELTY AT UCSF

IDA Activists to Highlight Animal Welfare Violations During National Primate Liberation Week

San Francisco - Members of In Defense of Animals (IDA) and Vigil for Animals are marking National Primate Liberation Week (this week, October 15th – October 23rd ) on the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) campus by calling for an immediate end to the use of non-human primates in research.

What: Animal advocates will maintain a presence at UCSF to raise awareness of non-human primates in laboratories and encourage insiders to “blow the whistle” on UCSF’s animal cruelty

When: Thursday, October 20 and Friday, October 21, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Where: Main entrance of the UCSF Parnassus Campus, 513 Parnassus Avenue, in San Francisco

The UCSF events will be part of more than twenty events happening around the country to raise awareness of the tens of thousands of primates who are confined in laboratories in the U.S. Data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) indicates that primate experimentation in the U.S. is on the rise, with an estimated 52,000 of humankind’s closest genetic relatives suffering and dying in laboratory experiments every year. Another 43,000 primates are imprisoned for breeding purposes. Macaques (primarily the rhesus macaque) are the most commonly used monkeys.

UCSF undertakes a number of research experiments that use non-human primates. Examples include restraining monkeys with electrodes implanted in their heads to record brain activity, bombarding of monkeys with hours of painful noise to cause partial deafness, performing open-skull brain recording and injecting monkeys with a brain-destroying chemicals to induce Parkinsons-like symptoms.

Recently, UCSF agreed to pay $92,500 to settle a legal complaint filed last year by the USDA that alleged 89 violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) in UCSF’s animal research labs between 2001 and 2003. At least three primate protocols were involved in the charges: the invasive brain experiments of Henry Ralston, Kris Bankiewicz and Michael Merzenich.

Amongst the USDA allegations were leaving monkeys unmonitored after surgery; performing a craniotomy on a monkey without providing post-operative pain relief and subjecting at least one monkey to multiple injections of a brain-destroying chemical through the carotid artery.

For more information, please visit www.vivisectioninfo.org.