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And FBI experts on domestic terrorism have become a regular fixture on the seminar and conference circuit, increasingly invited to lecture members of trade associations on the growing threat posed by animal rights extremists. Many concede that the repeated and increasing acts of violence by animal rights extremists have frayed the collective psyche of the scientific community.
For example, none of the corporate executives or researchers victimized by animal rights extremists—from scientists at Brown University to corporate executives at HLS or Wachovia, a tertiary target with past ties to the research company—agreed to talk about the violence on the record, let alone return a telephone call. “Even now, when researchers get hit, the tendency is to keep it quiet and out of the media,” says OHSU’s Newman.
At the same time, the intimidating acts trigger an undercurrent of anxiety. “Every phone call makes you wonder,” he says. “Is it someone in the animal movement trying to get my personal information for future reference?”
By most accounts, SHAC’s relentless campaign against HLS has had some success. Roughly 100 companies—from banks to security firms to lawn care providers—have severed ties with HLS. Protesters even managed to manipulate the New York Stock Exchange, which caved to SHAC tactics out of fear in 2005, briefly postponing the company’s date for listing on the NYSE.
One company, Bridge Pharmaceuticals, a San Francisco-based life science company, has suffered no attacks but decided nonetheless to transfer research and testing operations to China, specifically to avoid potential hassles with animal rights extremists. The loss that truly shook the industry, however, came to light in August 2006 when UCLA neurobiologist Dario Ringach, targeted by animal rights extremists for his research on non-human primates, called it quits. He announced his decision in an email to the ALF and others, requesting that the activists immediately drop him from their hit list. “Please don’t bother my family any more,” Ringach wrote. The subject heading and the first line of the email simply said: “You win.”
By most accounts, UCLA has endured the greatest number of attacks on academics. Widely criticized for its slow response to the initial wave of attacks, the university now takes an active role in FBI investigations of cases such as London’s. When Ringach conceded defeat and announced plans to abandon the use of non-human primates in research, UCLA issued the following statement: “We all suffer when animal rights activists attempt to intimidate researchers by physically threatening and harassing them and their families, including young children.” The statement added: “To be so extreme as to use violent tactics aimed at halting animal research is to take away hope from millions of people with cancer, AIDS, heart disease, and hundreds of other diseases.”
The violent tactics, or, more accurately, the need to respond to the attacks, takes away something else: time and money. That is why Mark A. Suckow, a professor at the University of Notre Dame, argues that every extremist attack creates a ripple and an overall effect on the community that he calls “pernicious.” “The pressure animal rights people place on research institutions and regulatory agencies has a pervasive affect on readiness,” says Suckow, Director of the Freimann Animal Care Facility at the Freimann Life Science Center, both based on the South Bend, Indiana campus. “There is a big loss of time, energy, and resources taken away from research.” Between pouring money into regulatory compliance and public relations required in the aftermath of an attack, the monetary drain adds up. Money is also spent on safety classes and measures to protect employees—which for some has included installing surveillance equipment and other protection at the target’s home. In retrospect, some now concede that the industry has at times been its own worst enemy, refusing or failing to communicate to the public the importance and necessity of using animal research models. “The animal rights people have been very effective at communicating their message, and in many cases the public buys it because they have no other information,” says Suckow. Newman adds: “If 20 years ago, the community had talked about the benefits of animal models, maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation today.”
Public relations aside, the animal rights extremists pose another problem. “The public does not fully realize that when it comes to extremists, there’s nothing to talk about. There is nothing to say to them short of we will stop doing research,” says FBR’s Trull. “Their war cry is, ‘We don’t want cleaner cages. We don’t want bigger cages. We want no cages.’”
In 2006, six animal activists from the group SHAC were convicted by a jury, jailed, and collectively held liable for $1 million for intimidating and attacking biomedical researchers at HLS. But many extremists remain fugitives, and arrests have been few and far between. Some say tougher laws might make it easier to prosecute animal activists. To that end, Congress in 2006 amended the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, making it a federal crime to cause “economic disruption” to life science and other animal researchers or to “tertiary targets” such as family and friends or corporate business partners.
Carolyn Marshall, a journalist based in San Francisco, is a regular contributor to The New York Times.
May 15, 2008
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-risky_business.html
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