Statement Regarding Animal Rights Terrorist Activities

Statement Regarding Animal Rights Terrorist Activities

Office of Media Relations,
media@support.ucla.edu

For Immediate Use (310) 825-2585

Aug. 7, 2006

Statement Regarding Animal Rights Terrorist Activities

The recent announcement by a UCLA professor that he has suspended research on primates illustrates the damage to society caused by the illegal terrorist activities of some animal rights groups. We all suffer when animal rights activists attempt to intimidate researchers by physically threatening and harassing them and their families, including young children. Research involving laboratory animals has served as a vital cornerstone in the development of lifesaving procedures and medicines, from vaccines to open-heart surgery, organ transplantation to mental health treatment. Yet many diseases remain untreatable, and animal research is critically important to millions of people with these conditions.

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. UCLA will continue to fulfill its commitment to improving human health and the quality of life through research that makes use of the most advanced scientific methods available, including humane, closely monitored and legal animal research when necessary. There is no justification for violence and other forms of intimidation and harassment of researchers, and UCLA deplores such tactics.

Unfortunately, such tactics have led a UCLA professor to discontinue primate research. UCLA is continuing to cooperate with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies investigating terrorist acts directed at university researchers.

-UCLA- PH337