In a verdict that U.K. scientists see as a turning point in efforts to protect animal researchers against illegal attacks, a British court yesterday convicted four people of conspiring to blackmail companies that supply an animal testing laboratory.
The activists had targeted employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences, Europe's largest contract medical testing center, with threats of violence, vandalism of homes and businesses, letter bombs, and firebombs between 2001 and 2007. Prosecutors at the trial, held in the southern English county of Kent, said the campaign was also directed against GlaxoSmithKline, Astellas Pharma Inc., F2 Chemicals Ltd., and Biocair. The defendants, members of the group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, will be sentenced next month along with three people who pleaded guilty earlier to conspiracy to blackmail. One defendant was acquitted.
The Kent trial grew out of 30 arrests made during a May 2007 police raid across the United Kingdom, dubbed Operation Achilles, which included sites in the Netherlands and Belgium. Simon Festing, the executive director of the Research Defence Society, tells ScienceInsider that, combined with similar trials over the past few years, the total number of convictions of such activists now stands at 30. He says those outcomes send a strong message that U.K. authorities are capable of protecting researchers. "This shutters the largest, most aggressive, and most unpleasant animal extremist organization in the world," says Festing, who notes that U.K. police have estimated the group contained about 40 to 60 active members. "Confidence is growing that police can deal with this problem. As a result, more and more scientists are willing to come out and explain the importance of animal research."
The police crackdown has been a boon to U.K. campuses. (The University of Cambridge abandoned plans in 2004 for a primate research lab, and activists have targeted an animal research lab being built by the University of Oxford.) Festings says there have been fewer than 10 criminal incidents this year, "none of them serious," a level that is the lowest in decades. "Now that people know most of the activists are in jail, it's easier to build and refurbish facilities and to attract investors," he says. "I think that people are becoming more comfortable in their ability to do good science."
—Jeffrey Mervis
The activists had targeted employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences, Europe's largest contract medical testing center, with threats of violence, vandalism of homes and businesses, letter bombs, and firebombs between 2001 and 2007. Prosecutors at the trial, held in the southern English county of Kent, said the campaign was also directed against GlaxoSmithKline, Astellas Pharma Inc., F2 Chemicals Ltd., and Biocair. The defendants, members of the group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, will be sentenced next month along with three people who pleaded guilty earlier to conspiracy to blackmail. One defendant was acquitted.
The Kent trial grew out of 30 arrests made during a May 2007 police raid across the United Kingdom, dubbed Operation Achilles, which included sites in the Netherlands and Belgium. Simon Festing, the executive director of the Research Defence Society, tells ScienceInsider that, combined with similar trials over the past few years, the total number of convictions of such activists now stands at 30. He says those outcomes send a strong message that U.K. authorities are capable of protecting researchers. "This shutters the largest, most aggressive, and most unpleasant animal extremist organization in the world," says Festing, who notes that U.K. police have estimated the group contained about 40 to 60 active members. "Confidence is growing that police can deal with this problem. As a result, more and more scientists are willing to come out and explain the importance of animal research."
The police crackdown has been a boon to U.K. campuses. (The University of Cambridge abandoned plans in 2004 for a primate research lab, and activists have targeted an animal research lab being built by the University of Oxford.) Festings says there have been fewer than 10 criminal incidents this year, "none of them serious," a level that is the lowest in decades. "Now that people know most of the activists are in jail, it's easier to build and refurbish facilities and to attract investors," he says. "I think that people are becoming more comfortable in their ability to do good science."
—Jeffrey Mervis
Festing called SHAC the most unpleasant animal rights organsation in the world. No matter what they have done or been accused of, the vivisectors and their suppliers are the unpleasant ones, or - to be more accurate - they are evil, twisted ghoulish torturers who target defenceless animals. The mediaeval paintings of Hell never portrayed the kind of evil that goes on in the hell-hole labs. The vivisectors are ignorant if they think they can use other species as reliable models for humans. Whilst they are wasting money torturing rats and dogs, they are denying finance to real research, such as goes on at places like the Hadwen Trust. With so much corruption involved in medical research, it's no wonder that they don't want proper research to be conducted. They would actually find cures and then they would have no one left to peddle their drugs to.
Festing's father is - or at least was - on the committee of the 3Rs group, which is supposed to be trying to find ways of replacing non-humans in medical research. But he is also a spokesman for the suppliers to vivisection laboratories. How can we have any faith in such a group when it has members who rely on vivisection for their earnings? They will do everything they can to help the vivisectors and they have no interest in putting an end to that unscientific nonsense. The things some people will do for money!