Animal Rights radicals fail to value human life

What do you think:

By: David Martosko
Newspaper: Home News Tribune (East Brunswick, NJ)

Six of America's most committed animal-rights activists will soon find
themselves entering cages instead of smashing them. Along with their
organization, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, they were convicted on
federal terrorism charges in March. Their campaign of fear and
intimidation targeted employees, customers, and suppliers of a medical
research laboratory that uses animals. Yesterday in Trenton, three were
sentenced to six years in jail. The remaining three face sentencing
this week and next.

Like true terror masterminds, these six took protecting lab rats past
the point of earnest debate and honest persuasion, choosing instead to
orchestrate a destructive crusade. Was it terrorism? You decide.

The campaign included death threats, overturned cars, bombings and
front-lawn midnight protests complete with chants of "Let's burn his
house to the ground." There was even a menacing phone barrage directed
at New York Stock Exchange employees, targeted for agreeing to list an
animal research company on the Big Board.

Real people with real families were terrified.

"You don't need a four-year degree to call in a bomb hoax," one of the
SHAC convicts told teens at a 2002 animal-rights convention. At a rally
outside a New Jersey laboratory, the same ringleader encouraged
activists to end animal-based medical research by targeting
"individuals who have weaknesses, who have breaking points, and who
have home addresses."

He wasn't kidding. The most compelling testimony in the SHAC trial came
from an insurance executive whose company underwrote a policy for that
New Jersey lab. She recounted how her 7-year-old son would grab a
kitchen knife whenever the doorbell rang, promising to protect her from
"the animal people."

Her son's name (and his teacher's) turned up on a SHAC Web site, along
with the fact that he sang in his school's choir. One day an anonymous
note arrived at the house, threatening to cut him open and poison him.

Empty or not, threats like this translate to sleepless nights and
crippling fear. And not all the bombs in this campaign have been
hoaxes. Two SHAC-targeted West Coast companies were struck by 10-pound
pipe bombs packed with nail shrapnel. One device included a secondary
explosive, timed to go off when paramedics arrived.

SHAC's leaders denied any involvement in these two attacks. Since
they're headed to prison, it's comforting to think they're just trying
to avoid lengthening their rap sheets. But the radical animal-rights
world is bigger than just six criminals.

Dozens of organizations in this nationwide movement want what SHAC
wants: an end to medical experiments using animals. Most Americans want
something very different. Cures for cancer and AIDS, for instance.

If history is any guide, animal research models are where these answers
await us. Animal testing has already brought us anesthesia,
antibiotics, insulin, vaccines, allergy shots, organ transplants, and
literally hundreds of other advances that we take for granted.

The church of animal rights, of which SHAC preaches merely the most
recent fundamentalism, would sweep that all aside. Some worshippers
make bombs - or, like SHAC, make bombers. Others lobby Congress, file
lawsuits, buy expensive advertising, and run propaganda-laden Web
sites. Most of them raise millions of dollars every year.

Some are familiar. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The
Humane Society of the United States. The Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine. The Animal Liberation Front. As varied as their
names and tactics are, these groups all share a common goal:
"Liberating" animals, regardless of the cost to humanity.

As a spokesman for the oddly misnamed Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine in 2003, Dr. Jerry Vlasak (who now speaks for the
Animal Liberation Front, an FBI-designated terror group) endorsed the
murder of medical researchers in the name of animal rights. "I don't
think you'd have to kill - assassinate - too many," he said. "For
five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2
million, 10 million non-human lives."

Bruce Friedrich, a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals vice
president, famously said in 2001 that "blowing stuff up and smashing
windows" is "a great way to bring about animal liberation." And PETA
president Ingrid Newkirk has never softened her 17-year-old stance that
"even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we'd be against
it."

Six animal-rights extremists will go to prison, but many more are out
there. While law enforcement can respond to arson fires and death
threats, subtler attacks on the future of humanity demand everyone's
vigilance.

1. it's a lot more than "lab rats." Dogs, cats monkeys, etc. And lots
of them.

2. Vivisection remains a costly pseudo-science.

3. it is one of the new GROWTH INDUSTRIES, helping to replace all
those tens of millions of "good manufacting jobs."

-----------------------
Vonne wrote:
> What do you think:
>
> By: David Martosko
> Newspaper: Home News Tribune (East Brunswick, NJ)
>
> Six of America's most committed animal-rights activists will soon find
> themselves entering cages instead of smashing them. Along with their
> organization, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, they were convicted on
> federal terrorism charges in March. Their campaign of fear and
> intimidation targeted employees, customers, and suppliers of a medical
> research laboratory that uses animals. Yesterday in Trenton, three were
> sentenced to six years in jail. The remaining three face sentencing
> this week and next.
>
> Like true terror masterminds, these six took protecting lab rats past
> the point of earnest debate and honest persuasion, choosing instead to
> orchestrate a destructive crusade. Was it terrorism? You decide.
>
> The campaign included death threats, overturned cars, bombings and
> front-lawn midnight protests complete with chants of "Let's burn his
> house to the ground." There was even a menacing phone barrage directed
> at New York Stock Exchange employees, targeted for agreeing to list an
> animal research company on the Big Board.
>
> Real people with real families were terrified.
>
> "You don't need a four-year degree to call in a bomb hoax," one of the
> SHAC convicts told teens at a 2002 animal-rights convention. At a rally
> outside a New Jersey laboratory, the same ringleader encouraged
> activists to end animal-based medical research by targeting
> "individuals who have weaknesses, who have breaking points, and who
> have home addresses."
>
> He wasn't kidding. The most compelling testimony in the SHAC trial came
> from an insurance executive whose company underwrote a policy for that
> New Jersey lab. She recounted how her 7-year-old son would grab a
> kitchen knife whenever the doorbell rang, promising to protect her from
> "the animal people."
>
> Her son's name (and his teacher's) turned up on a SHAC Web site, along
> with the fact that he sang in his school's choir. One day an anonymous
> note arrived at the house, threatening to cut him open and poison him.
>
> Empty or not, threats like this translate to sleepless nights and
> crippling fear. And not all the bombs in this campaign have been
> hoaxes. Two SHAC-targeted West Coast companies were struck by 10-pound
> pipe bombs packed with nail shrapnel. One device included a secondary
> explosive, timed to go off when paramedics arrived.
>
> SHAC's leaders denied any involvement in these two attacks. Since
> they're headed to prison, it's comforting to think they're just trying
> to avoid lengthening their rap sheets. But the radical animal-rights
> world is bigger than just six criminals.
>
> Dozens of organizations in this nationwide movement want what SHAC
> wants: an end to medical experiments using animals. Most Americans want
> something very different. Cures for cancer and AIDS, for instance.
>
> If history is any guide, animal research models are where these answers
> await us. Animal testing has already brought us anesthesia,
> antibiotics, insulin, vaccines, allergy shots, organ transplants, and
> literally hundreds of other advances that we take for granted.
>
> The church of animal rights, of which SHAC preaches merely the most
> recent fundamentalism, would sweep that all aside. Some worshippers
> make bombs - or, like SHAC, make bombers. Others lobby Congress, file
> lawsuits, buy expensive advertising, and run propaganda-laden Web
> sites. Most of them raise millions of dollars every year.
>
> Some are familiar. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The
> Humane Society of the United States. The Physicians Committee for
> Responsible Medicine. The Animal Liberation Front. As varied as their
> names and tactics are, these groups all share a common goal:
> "Liberating" animals, regardless of the cost to humanity.
>
> As a spokesman for the oddly misnamed Physicians Committee for
> Responsible Medicine in 2003, Dr. Jerry Vlasak (who now speaks for the
> Animal Liberation Front, an FBI-designated terror group) endorsed the
> murder of medical researchers in the name of animal rights. "I don't
> think you'd have to kill - assassinate - too many," he said. "For
> five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2
> million, 10 million non-human lives."
>
> Bruce Friedrich, a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals vice
> president, famously said in 2001 that "blowing stuff up and smashing
> windows" is "a great way to bring about animal liberation." And PETA
> president Ingrid Newkirk has never softened her 17-year-old stance that
> "even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we'd be against
> it."
>
> Six animal-rights extremists will go to prison, but many more are out
> there. While law enforcement can respond to arson fires and death
> threats, subtler attacks on the future of humanity demand everyone's
> vigilance.