AR idiocy in the news......

The Animal Liberation Front ( ALF ) , a domestic terrorist organization, has claimed responsibility for an attack on the home of Dr. Edythe London, a professor and researcher at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine. The vandals flooded Prof. London's home with a garden hose, doing $20,000-$40,000 worth of damage. In a rather courageous act, Prof. London wrote a response to the attack that has run in today's Los Angeles Times. In this response, Professor London outlines the work she is doing and why animal use is important to it. Professor London's calm, well-reasoned response to the ALF terrorists is, IMHO, nothing short of awesome. Prof. London has done a tremendous service to the research community here, because her response shows scientists to be the reasoned, rational people they are, while making the ALF thugs look like exactly what they are: cracked lunatics who think they have a right to terrorize others and commit criminal acts in the name of their ideology. Big time kudos to Professor London for putting out this courageous response to the ALF dirtbags.


In another story, a New Jersey appellate court has dismissed a lawsuit against Huntington Life Sciences ( HLS ), a pharmaceutical testing firm, by the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ( NJSPCA ) . NJSPCA sued Huntington for allegedly causing unnecessary pain and suffering to animals, and had sought restitution from the company. The court rightly dismissed the case, because HLS has no legal obligations to NJSPCA, and thus there is no grounds for a claim of restitution. Seems to me like a frivolous lawsuit in which an animal advocacy group was trying to use the legal system as way to steal money from a legitimate business that it happens to dislike. I'm certainly no law expert, but I can't help but wonder, and hope, that perhaps this case will set a precedent in cutting off AR groups and their lawyers that hope use litigation "on behalf of animals" in the future as part of their strategy.