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The ELF/ALF axis of evil must be destroyed

By Scott Tibbs, June 6, 2005

Animal rights extremists want me to die. They want to end the humane, essential use of animals in medical research. If these extremists had gotten their way decades ago, you would not be reading this column because I would be dead. On March 21, 1997, I was admitted into Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The surgeons removed my left testicle in order to prevent the cancer growing in the organ from spreading. Biomedical research saved my life.

I am sure people can understand, then, why I tend to take it personally when animal rights extremists say that all biomedical research must end. I become more outraged when I see "animal rights" extremists take a page out of the al Qaeda playbook to accomplish this goal. Note the following frightening article on the activities of the radical Animal Liberation Front:

Last month, animal rights extremists followed the wife of a pharmaceutical company executive to her job, riffled through her car and stole a credit card. They used it buy $20,000 in traveler’s checks, which they then donated to four charities.

This is not the only thing these savages have done. The Animal Liberation Front also:

  • "Used a bullhorn at night for a week last October to harass a Forest Laboratories executive."
  • "Glued the locks on the homes of other company executives in Nassau and Suffolk counties."
  • Spray-painted the homes and cars of company executives, branding them "puppy killer" and "murderer."

This is far from the first time animal-rights fanatics have targeted individuals. In 2001, a group of terrorists in Great Britain attacked and brutally beat an executive of Huntington Life Sciences. The attack left the victim with a three-inch head wound. The so-called Animal Liberation Brigade left an ominous warning to a pharmaceutical company: "You might be able to protect your buildings, but can you protect the homes of every employee?"

Frankie Trull, president of the Foundation for Biomedical Research, told the Associated Press "these are unbelievably mean-spirited people who operate under this delusion that they are on a higher moral ground than the rest of us." Does this sound familiar? The mass murderers who took down the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 and slaughtered 3,000 people in the process believed they were doing what was right in the eyes of their "god".

Steven Milloy points out something that has been exposed many times in many different sources, but bears repeating anyway. The nation's leading animal rights organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, supports the terrorists in the ALF. A representative of PETA said this of the ALF: "Throughout history, some people have felt the need to break the law to fight injustice. The Underground Railroad and the French Resistance are both examples of people breaking the law in order to answer to a higher morality." Again, does this not sound like something Osama bin Laden would say?

PETA, the ALF and other animal rights groups believe that humans are not above the animal kingdom, so we have no moral right to experiment on animals for our own health. If PETA and the ALF were consistent, they would be looking for a way to change carnivorous animals into vegetarians. If it is immoral for humans to experiment on animals to find cures for diseases, it is also immoral for carnivores in the wild to murder and eat other animals. How can PETA let this cruelty continue without doing something about it? (Actually, some of them have tried to do just that, with house pets at least. But this does raise a question. How does Ingrid Newkirk justify owning a dog after she said that "pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation"?)

Of course, it is impossible to not kill. Every human being that has ever existed has killed something in order to survive. Even if you live the perfect politically correct vegan life, your immune system is murdering viruses and bacteria. Animal rights extremists all draw a line below which they do not grant rights; their line happens to be lower than the line I would draw.

Human beings using animals for biomedical research is justified by natural law. Just as a lion or a wolf kills in order to stay alive, human beings take advantage of our superior intelligence and technology to use animals to find ways to combat disease, heal injuries, and to benefit ourselves in other ways.

But animal-rights extremists do not see it that way, and are stooping lower and lower in their jihad to force their radical agenda on all of us. On September 11, 2001, America changed forever. We recognized just how dangerous terrorism can be. It is long past time to take the lessons we learned on 9/11 and apply it to the ALF/ELF axis of evil.