The violent animal rights group SHAC, which has ties to the Animal Liberation Front and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, engages in terrorism with the aim of dismantling Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a medical research firm working to find new treatments and cures for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, cancer and epilepsy. SHAC activists in the United States and Britain have firebombed automobiles, smashed windows, assaulted research employees, and targeted individual investors for round-the-clock harassment and intimidation.
“Letters threatening to kill you, saying they know where you are, they’re watching us, they could be next to you in the supermarket,” one British HLS employee says of her daily intimidation and harassment by SHAC. Reports radio’s Marketplace: “Some lab staff have been physically attacked. One manager had ammonia thrown in his face. Another was hit over the head with a baseball bat.” [To hear the report, click here and advance your player to 0:17:55.0.]
These sorts of attacks on medical researchers could cost thousands of lives. Witness the recent curing of sickle cell anemia in lab mice, which could lead to a cure for the painful disease that affects more than 70,000 Americans. But animal rights extremists don’t care. SHAC now warns American investors in HLS that associating with the firm will “bring animal rights activists to your doorstep, they will bring animal rights activists to your home, into your offices and on top of your offices, and no one wants the hassle.”
