For Immediate Release
La Jolla, CA: In an anonymous communique received by the Press Office yesterday, the Animal Liberation Front claims to have placed an incendiary device in the vehicle of vivisector Howard S. Fox of Scripps Research Institute. Fox is infamous for addicting non-human primates to methamphetamines, infecting them with the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) allegedly to imitate AIDS, and then killing them in his laboratory, writing about his exploits in obscure scientific journals. Fox has obtained more than two million dollars in grants during the last two years to perform these experiments.
Nothing Fox has done to the innocent non-human primates imprisoned and then killed in his laboratory is applicable to treating human illness; SIV does not emulate AIDS in humans, nor does methamphetamine addiction in non-human primates assist in treating human disease.
The anonymous communique reads:
“On the night of March 4th, 2010. We planted an incendiary device in the exhaust pipe of California Vivisectionist Howard Fox. Hopefully this action will help Mr. Fox decide to pursue a different career choice. The Animal Liberation Front ”
Press Officer Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a medical doctor and former vivisector, is not surprised at the act of sabotage, nor at the waste of medical funding for fraudulent and immoral purposes. “As Scripps and other research institutions continue to throw away scarce medical research funding on antiquated and useless animal experimentation, other centers utilize and conduct modern medical research that will result in cures for human patients such as those I and other clinicians treat daily. Refusal to discontinue his futile and cruel primate research results in additional consequences at the hands of less forgiving activists.”
Dr. Vlasak and other opponents of fallacious animal research were recently banned from a discussion forum at UCLA on the topic of animal experimentation. There, other oppositional forces including a medical doctor, a respected scientist and an ethicist pointed out clearly the scientific and ethical implications of continuing to imprison, torture and kill innocent animals while concurrently wasting resources that could be better spent on modern health-care research. Still, vivisectors like Fox continue to mutilate and kill primates while thousands of Americans die for lack of funds for basic healthcare.
While 20,000 children worldwide die every month from lack of access to clean water, vivisectors at Scripps and University of California laboratories are wasting money addicting primates to crystal methamphetamines, gluing coils to the globes of their eyes and doing other inhumane and painful experiments on other species of animals, including cats, dogs, pigs, mice and birds. In a civilized society, and with better alternatives to animal experimentation, US academia should be on the fore-front of good, solid, non-animal-based research that could save the lives of children and adults alike. Until they begin doing ethical, scientifically-valid, non-animal research, vivisectors will continue to be a target for those who morals, courage and heroism refuse to permit them to stand by and watch the needless suffering.