Marchers Protest UCI’s Animal Tests : Vivisection: A researcher denies that the treatment of monkeys and other subjects is cruel and unnecessary and points to specific scientific advances tied to the experiments.

IRVINE — Placard-carrying demonstrators marched across UC Irvine on Wednesday to protest the killing of monkeys on campus and other experiments that they called cruel and unnecessary.

But one of the medical researchers singled out by the protesters defended his work with monkeys as helping to lead to a new understanding of how the human brain works.

“One question (the demonstrators) asked on a poster is one I ask every day,” said Stewart H. Hendry, an assistant professor of anatomy and neurobiology. “‘What have you accomplished?’ If I wasn’t able to tell myself what I have done is (to) make life a little bit better for another person, I wouldn’t do it.”

Ava Park, founder of Orange County People for Animals and leader of Wednesday’s campus protest, called Hendry’s recent research on monkeys “useless, cruel experiments that have no useful application.”

Park led the 71 protesters to a sidewalk outside of Hendry’s office at the College of Medicine. But all of the buildings had been locked all week in anticipation of the demonstration, and no one let Park inside. Security on campus had been increased, and about 12 campus police officers--one videotaping the protesters--stood nearby.

Park said she learned about Hendry’s research on monkeys in a recent medical journal, Experimental Brain Research. The journal’s article recounts the blinding of 14 monkeys in one eye. The monkeys were anesthetized, and one of their eyes was injected with a drug that stops all visual functions for about five days, Hendry said. In other cases, one eye was surgically blinded.

After varying periods, the monkeys were killed and their brains studied for the effect of partial sight loss on brain function.

“I can’t reiterate how wrong they are that all this research hasn’t gone anywhere,” Hendry said after the protesters left campus. “They simply don’t care or don’t know what they’re talking about.”

By depriving the monkeys of sight in one eye for varying periods and studying their brains later, Hendry said, he could show that the brain compensates for the vision loss by making chemical changes in the cerebral cortex.

Until those experiments, scientists believed that the adult cerebral cortex does not change chemically, Hendry said.

Understanding how the brain works and changes is key to finding treatments for a range of brain disorders resulting from strokes, Alzheimer’s disease and various emotional disorders, he said.

“I do not respect the argument that the research is ineffectual or needless,” Hendry said. The protesters “must interpret my behavior as inhuman. Not inhumane, but inhuman, to make animals suffer needlessly.”

That’s pretty much true, said Susan Oden, a Long Beach member of Orange County People for Animals.

“They’re like bad little boys still mutilating animals,” said Oden, 38. “If they were little boys, they would be punished. But since they’re scientists, they’re held up as pillars of the community.”

Making animals suffer, even to benefit people, is inexcusable, she said.

“It diminishes us as human beings if every time we need to advance ourselves as human beings we have to destroy animals,” she said.

Wednesday’s protest was part of a week of organized demonstrations observing World Week Against Vivisection. Demonstrators also protested Tuesday at UC Santa Barbara.

The UCI protest was also aimed at the thousands of animals that have been killed in campus labs.

The university used about 37,000 animals for research from July, 1990, to June, 1991, university spokeswoman Linda Granell said. Of that figure, nine were primates, 28 were cats, 91 were pigs and 21 were sheep. About 34,000 were rats and mice, she said. Rabbits made up another 1,003 and gerbils, 1,622.

Most small research animals are eventually killed, she said.

Four years ago, members of an animal-rights group broke into a campus kennel and stole 13 beagles, mostly used for research into the effects of air pollution. Because some animal-rights groups have committed vandalism and theft in the past, mostly at other universities, UCI locked buildings at the College of Medicine all week and called in extra officers.

“Some animal groups have a history of violence,” Granell said.

Protesters began their demonstration at one of UCI’s Campus Drive entrances by holding signs with pictures of animals being used in experiments. The group then marched to the College of Medicine, handing out literature to students that criticized Hendry and four other medical researchers.

The group conducted silent vigils outside of three research buildings as people inside drew aside plastic blinds to watch.

The protesters stood with the signs “to let these people know they cannot waste taxpayer money on frivolous experiments,” Park said. “A lot of animals have died in these buildings for absolutely nothing.”