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Activist's UK visit heats up debate on animal rights

The pending visit of a radical animal rights activist from the US has provoked the British government to warn he could be prevented from entering.

Jerry Vlasak immediately said he would contest any attempt by Home Secretary David Blunkett to prevent him speaking at an animal rights conference next month.

And he threatened to take legal action against the Observer Sunday newspaper which reported that he had advocated violence against animal researchers.

Vlasak, a surgeon who acknowledges he has himself carried out experiments on animals, has come to the view that animal experimentation has little or no value in research into medical treatment for humans.

Animal rights activists in Britain have targeted companies involved in animal research, picketing their facilities, attacking their staff and putting pressure on their financial backers.

Brian Cass, managing director of Huntingdon Life Sciences, one of Europe's leading animal testing laboratories, was seriously injured when he was attacked by a masked gang wielding pickax handles outside his home near Cambridge in February 2001.

This month he backed new legislation to make protests outside private homes illegal.

"We really do feel that it's necessary to make it illegal for anybody to hold a protest of any sort directly at somebody's home," he said.

And the chief executive of Britain's biggest drug company, Glaxo SmithKline, Jean-Pierre Garnier, said his employees were found that anti-vivisection militants were costing the UK ?1 billion a year in security costs and lost investment.

Cambridge University this year abandoned plans for a new primate research facility, and last month construction group Montpellier pulled out of a ?18 million project near Oxford.

Even their concrete supplier was targeted, with the brakes of trucks being sabotaged and equipment destroyed.

Tipu Aziz, a neurosurgeon at Oxford University, said it would be a national disaster if the laboratory was not built because of demonstrations. "If it doesn't get built it will be proof that an extremist handful of people can disrupt everything," he said.

The Home Office responded by announcing police would have additional powers to curb protests outside private homes, drawing anger not only from animal rights activists, but also from civil libertarians.

The protesters have developed highly effective strategies to put pressure on the companies conducting animal experiments. They picket their premises, target individual staff members, put pressure on shareholders and conduct well-organized campaigns against banks providing them with finance.

As the construction company and its cement supplier found out in recent months, even a fairly remote connection with animal experiments can lead to action.

Activists have even sent letters to the neighbors of scientists, accusing them of being pedophiles.
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