FBI probing arson attack on UCLA researcher's car [UPDATED]

The FBI is looking into an arson attack on a vehicle owned by a UCLA neuroscientist who was targeted by an anti-animal-research group for using primates in his study of psychiatric disorders.

Saturday's incident involving a homemade incendiary device took place outside the faculty member’s home and caused no injuries, according to FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller.

The UCLA professor, who researches treatments for schizophrenia, drug addiction and other disorders, was not identified.

The incident is one in a series string of aggressive acts aimed at university researchers who use animals in medical studies and research, said UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton. In other cases, firebombs have been left on doorsteps, vehicles have been vandalized and researchers have received threatening phone calls and e-mails.

The harassment led to a court order last year that has since been converted into a preliminary injunction  banning distribution of researchers’ personal information on websites and fliers.

Eimiller said the investigation of Saturday’s incident will be conducted by a Joint Terrorism Task Force that includes the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles Fire Department, the UCLA Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The loosely organized animal rights group Animal Liberation Front posted a message on its website Monday from a group that claimed responsibility for the attack.

UCLA is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in the incident.

Updated, Tuesday 3:15 p.m.: A previous version of this story referred to the incident as a firebombing. In fact, the FBI has not called it a firebombing and considers the incident "suspicious arson."

-- Julie Cart

Comments

[Owen]

I hope that the FBI catches the people behind these attacks soon, they are a real threat to scientific progress. It's not enough to just rely on the FBI and police though, where are the UCLA academics, students and LA citizens who should be supporting the scientists who are being harassed and threatened?

In the UK students and scientists stood up to the extremists who were burning down buildings in Oxford, and forced the animal reight movement in the UK to realise that it could not achieve its goals through harassment, intimidation and terror.

So go on then, Stand up for Science.

[Red]

Sounds like those animal-rights kooks need the mental-illness treatments that the researcher is developing.

You folks at UCLA need to get in touch with Pro-Test in the UK and start a counter organization to support these researchers and to put these animal-rights loons on notice that they need to grow up, get a job and stop being good-for-nothing losers.

[Madeline]

Those UK protests weren't grassroots. More like industry supported "astroturf." UCLA students aren't going to defend these overpaid sadists' "research." It's not saving lives, it's mostly sleep deprivation experiments, drug addiction experiments and even tobacco-industry funded experiments on nicotine!

[adij]

Anyone who says that the research on animals isn't saving lives is simply ignorant. Drug addiction alone affects millions of people in the US, and millions more worldwide. A slew of psychological problems, chronic illnesses, and acute medical conditions make use of animal research to advance research.

Some research can be conducted on humans, while other research simply can not. The notion that scientists get some pleasure from harming animals is sick.

[Erik C.]

Besides being cruel, animal testing has been disastrous for human health. Vivisectors are always blathering on about their "lifesaving research" (smoking experiments on beagles, blinding rabbits for perfume, gunshots on dogs), but they don't tell you about all of the PEOPLE they've killed and maimed as a result of these experiments (Thalidomide, Rezulin, Vioxx, Advair, etc. Click on my name for a longer list).

And how did the Thalidomide pushers defend themselves in court? They brought forth expert witnesses who testified under oath that animal testing couldn't have predicted the results! What a tragedy for human and non-human animals.

UCLA professor Edythe London received $6 million from tobacco giant Philip Morris to do smoking addiction experiments on monkeys (they were later killed). The study included teen smokers. A spokesman for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (a real anti-smoking group) said, "It's stunning in this day and age that a university would do secret research for the tobacco industry on the brains of children. It raises fundamental questions about the integrity, honesty and openness of research anywhere at the University of California."

[Paul]

Pro-Test was about as grassroots as it gets, at the start Oxford University even tried to discourage us before realising that we were succeeding where their years of timidity had failed. Our funding comes from individual donations, not from companies.

We support animal research because it has played a vital role in most of the medical breakthroughs of the past century (e.g. 70% of Nobel Prizes for Physiology or Medicine) and continues to play a vital role today, for example in the very stem cell research that the LA times welcomed so enthusiastically on Monday.

[Tom]

There's the US wing of Pro-Test - www.speakingofresearch.com

Guys in UCLA should get in touch with them to organize students and scientists into standing up against this extremism or we'll probably just be seeing more of it.

[Carl T.]

Those “Pro-Test” rallies were bunk. When questioned by reporters, many of the “demonstrators” at the 2006 Oxford rally stated that they were in fact AGAINST testing on primates. So I wonder what motivated them to participate. Money, perhaps? That “movement” is about as grass roots a certain restaurant industry front group that has a link to this page on its website.

[Asclepia]

Anyone fantasizing about a “Pro-Test” movement happening in the U.S. is ignoring some big differences between higher education in the U.S. and UK.

Here in the U.S., animal researchers are deeply entrenched in Big Business – agri-business, junk food companies, the tobacco industry and multi-billion dollar drug companies are all financing these experiments on animals. Clearly it’s a conflict of interest that would not be tolerated in any other profession. Can you imagine a journalist receiving money from the tobacco industry and then doing a story on tobacco, claiming it was objective? Of course not, yet we typically hear, for example, “a new study from the University of Wherever found that eggs are not as bad for your heart as previously thought. And, by the way, the study was funded by the American Egg Board.”

American students, unlike their European counterparts, often go into deep personal debt to finance their own educations. I think it’s highly unlikely they’re going to spend their precious free time marching in defense of Big Business’ shady self-serving “research,” especially during this economic crisis, and particularly since some of the researchers seem to be living beyond the means of their university salaries.

[John Patrick]

Paul said, "We support animal research because it has played a vital role in most of the medical breakthroughs of the past century..."

Here's one of the big fallacies of vivisection. What they're not telling you is that the FDA requires that all pharmaceuticals be tested for toxicity on animals. So no matter what the substance is made of, or how it was developed, before it becomes medicine, it has to be tested on animals. And then vivisectors disingenuously take all the credit (until, like Vioxx and Rezulin, it starts killing people). It would be like the royal family bragging that they've produced all of the monarchs of the past century, as though it didn't happen by default.

Vivisection is not only cruel, it is corrupt. Universities have rubber stamp oversight committees, and neither they nor the veterinarians on the payroll, nor any government regulators ever seem to catch the abject cruelty that animal welfare groups like the Humane Society of the United States recently exposed in an undercover investigation at the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana, where hundreds of chimpanzees - our closest genetic relatives - were abused. And the money trail is truly outrageous when you learn that UCLA's nicotine research is funded by the tobacco industry.

[leb]

Even if you believe animal research is inhumane, a personal attack on a scientist is not a reasonable or responsible action. The UCLA professor who was the target of the attack could have been seriously injured and it appears that those responsible had that as a goal. Terrorizing the academic community should not be accepted.

Animal research benefits everyone, and not just through drug research. It provides an understanding of the underlying mechanisms of psychiatric illnesses and gives insight into the human mind. Neuroscience research is strictly governed and takes the health and well being of non-human subjects in psychological research very seriously.

Though it would be tragic to lose the benefit that animal research provides our society, it would be more tragic to lose the life of a scientist and teacher because a radical group like the Animal Liberation Front feels that it can decide what merits research, how that research can be performed, and most importantly who deserves to die for it. We should not applaud a group that resorts to terrorist tactics and violence to promote its agenda.

[Rachael]

Saying that animal researchers claim credit for life-saving treatments simply because toxicity tests are done on animals is insulting and absurd. Blaming them for drugs that then kill people is likewise illogical. If you don't think that medicines are safe blame the pharmaceutical companies.

Clearly you don't know Professor Jentsch or his research because if you did you would know that even if these statements were true (which they're not) they do not apply to him. He has done nothing but try to understand the biology of debilitating mental illnesses so that we might be able to develop and offer better treatments in the future. He is not in the pocket of pharmaceutical companies or the tobacco industry. He studies disorders that cost our country millions of dollars in health care a year and which are so distressing that people often kill themselves to escape their symptoms. He is a kind and compassionate person and does not deserve any of this.

If you truly want to help animals and show the world that all beings deserve to be treated with love and respect then try showing some of that respect to your own species. Tactics that are designed to intimidate and harm people do nothing to support your cause. The people who targeted him are terrorists not animal lovers, they are people bent on destruction. So to anyone who supports these actions I can only say that you cannot pretend to fight a moral battle in such a manner and expect people to take your cause seriously. And you cannot crush the spirits of those of us who actually do want to make the world better and try and help people.

[Tom]

Actually, when researchers say it's played a part in most medical breakthroughs they are NOT talking about when its simply used for toxicity tests. They are talking about animals used in the development process (well before safety testing). When we want to treat a new disease we first need to create a model of this disease - something we can't ethically do in humans, but can often do in animals.

Furthermore drugs like Vioxx and Thalidomide got onto markets as "safe" on the basis of HUMAN clinical trials - these are what determine a drug as safe. Animal tests are there to help ensure that we don't see people dying in early phase clinical trials - and it has done this successfully.

[Jason]

I understand that this sort of research may make people unhappy; however, there are lawful ways to oppose it. This kind of action simply inflames and hardens people on both sides of the issue. Work to change the laws and build popular support for your cause; terror attacks are never the solution.

[Diana]

Perhaps if the media did a better job of covering animal issues, and universities were more open about what they're doing and who's funding it, vandals wouldn't resort to these publicity stunts.

Did the Los Angeles Times or any other media outlet in Los Angeles (or the world) report that UCLA's nicotine research is funded by the tobacco industry BEFORE that professor's house was vandalized? If a city employee has even a hint of a conflict of interest it makes the front page of the Times. It's time for the media to take a closer, more critical look at universities, particularly state schools like UCLA.

[Warrior kung fu]

Shame on you animal research advocates.

So medical progress has been made by doing animal testing, so what? Maybe its helping humans, but it certainly isnt helping sentient non humans who feel pain and suffering the same as we do. Real nice. Make an animal suffer in hopes that we can suffer less. How fair!

And, alot of the experiments are obscure, innacurate, irrelevant, and the results easily predicted by common sense as well as completly unethical