Write a response to this students essay. What do you have to add to the topic? Use at least one source.

For the discussion this week I found an article from the Huffington Post titled Animal Rights Activist Shift Tactics, Targeting Individual Scientists and Businesses.

The article primarily discusses how activists have shifted their tactics over the last decade and are now targeting individual researchers and the businesses that

support them. The article then further discusses a report released by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). The report released by the

FASEB is titled The Threat of Extremism to Medical Research: Best Practices to Mitigate Risk through Preparation and Communication and was written to provide

guidance to scientists and institutions around the world to deal with animal extremists. Specifically, the report addresses how to handle situation where individuals

and groups damage laboratories, send threatening e-mails and vandalize the graves of researchers relatives. Several incidents resulted in the FASEB to release the

article. The first incident was when the animal rights activist group Animal Liberation front broke into a psychology laboratory at the University of Iowa and

intentionally damaged equipment, spray painted walls and removed hundred of animals from the laboratory. The incident cost the school over 400,000 dollars in damage.

Another incident that occurred leading up to the releasing of the report was when animal rights extremists set fire to a car that belonged to a neuroscientist who

worked at the University of California, Los Angeles. According to the report the extremist were upset that neuroscientist worked on rats and monkeys. The final

incident that the article discusses is when multiple researchers reported that animal rights extremists have arrived at their homes in the middle of the night and made

threats to the researchers and their families. According to the FASEB, the purpose of releasing the article was to spread awareness to researchers and make them think

about how animal rights activists have been using extreme protest methods to get their point across (Grimm, 2014).

The report also includes statistic of incidents that occurred involving animal rights extremists and the victims associated. In 1990 €“ 2012 there were 220 illegal

incidents that occurred. From 1990 €“ 1999, 61 percent of those incidents affected universities and nine percent of those incidents affect individuals. However, from

2000 €“ 2012 universities were victims of 13 percent of the incidents that occurred whereas individuals were involved in 46 percent of incidents that occurred involving

animal rights extremists (Grimm, 2014).

Overall, the article expresses the importance to not tolerate terrorism from extreme animal rights activists. As wildlife management is advancing in its practices

animal rights activists are taking some extreme measures to discourage wildlife managers from executing their duties. I am sure the problem will become more

problematic as time goes on, but the important thing for animal researchers to focus on right now is to be aware of the situations they face and be prepared to act

accordingly if a situation should arise. Despite the opposition, animal scientists must continue to carry out their duties to ensure species have the opportunity to

lie in suitable habitats across the world.

References

Grimm, D. (2014). Animal rights activist shift tactics, targeting individual scientists and businesses. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/16/animals-rights-activists-tactics_n_4965476.html