You Win!

A neurobiology professor, Dr. Dario Ringach, has given up animal research because of pressure from the UCLA Primate Freedom Project. This group published a picture of Dr. Ringach along with his address, phone number and email address on their website.

Why did he stop? From "Inside Higher Education"

Anti-animal research groups are trumpeting Ringach’s move as a victory, while some researchers are worried that it could embolden such groups to use more extreme tactics.

Ringach’s name and home phone number are posted on the Primate Freedom Project’s Web site, and colleagues and UCLA officials said that Ringach was harassed by phone — his office phone number is no longer active — and e-mail, as well as through demonstrations in front of his home.

In an e-mail this month to several anti-animal research groups, Ringach wrote that “you win,” and asked that the groups “please don’t bother my family anymore.”

Colleagues suggested that Ringach, who did not return e-mails seeking comment, was spooked by an attack on a colleague. In June, the Animal Liberation Front took credit for trying to put a Molotov cocktail on the doorstep of Lynn Fairbanks, another UCLA researcher who does experimentation on animals. The explosive was accidentally placed on the doorstep of Fairbanks’s elderly neighbor’s house, and did not detonate.

There is a bill in committee called the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (H.R. 4239) that would supposedly make it a crime to harrass animal researchers or for that matter any enterprise that uses animals for 'profit'. The act has primarily Repulican sponsors which makes me suspect that legal civil rights will be taken away from protesters.

Unfortunately, the current Animal Enterprise Protection Act is largely unused by prosecutors. An analysis of the Act by animal liberation types can be found HERE.