Target.
What does that word make you think of? What if that word was on a Web site, hyperlinked with bull’s-eye graphics pointing out your name and home address?
Members of Utah Primate Freedom (UPF), a local animal rights group, have done just that. Through the “targets” link on its Web site, www.utahprimatefreedom.com, is a list of the names and home addresses of four U researchers. Upset with perceived cruelty researchers employ in their experiments on primates at the U labs, UPF has employed a campaign of harassment and fear against the researchers over the last few months.
The organization’s allegations of cruelty come regardless of the fact that the specifics of the primate experiments are not disclosed to the public, despite the ethics policy of U researchers to anesthetize the animals before surgery and euthanize them afterward when necessary.
According to Dustin Gardiner’s article in Tuesday’s issue of The Chronicle (“Animal rights group targets U researchers,” Jan. 9), in the last few months, U researchers Audie Leventhal, Alessandra Angelucci, Jennifer Ichida and Robert Donahoe, (dubbed the “Filthy Four” by UPF) have had to deal with protests and threats by the members of the group. Dressed in identity-obscuring clothing, the UPF has made it a habit to picket the researchers’ homes late at night. Jeremy Beckham, the leader of UPF, justifies his group’s actions on the basis that there is “no moral distinction” between experimenting on animals and experimenting on people.
Equating such experiments to Nazi war crimes, Beckham says the sort of “confrontational tactics” his group employs are justified.
“What we’re doing is nothing compared to what they do,” he said. “Angelucci (and the other researchers) are not the real victims here. I don’t have any empathy for her. I’d like to see her with her skull cut open and diodes implanted in her brain. Maybe then she’d stop.”
Who sounds more like the Nazi here?
There’s something very ironic about people who have anthropomorphized animals to the point of equality, yet treat their fellow human beings like animals. Such radical, shortsighted activism is bred from ignorance, emotional instability and a disassociation from reality.
Obvious flaws in the UPF’s logic aside (monkeys are simply not people, so regardless of what Beckham says, there is bound to be distinction between the two)–assuming the group even has legitimate grounds for grievance–the behavior and tactics they employ are totally unacceptable. No one deserves to live in fear, and the UPF and other groups like them need to seriously re-examine their values. If they truly believed their cause was so righteous, they would have no need to mask their identities from those they accuse.
There’s another problem with the UPF’s behavior however, and that’s the damage they’re doing to the legitimate side of the animal rights movement. Animal cruelty is a relevant social issue, but it’s a hard one for people to take seriously when, anytime the topic is discussed, radical groups like Animal Liberation Front (ALF), UPF, and (sometimes) People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) hijack the conversation with ridiculous, immature and threatening rhetoric.
It’s right for socially minded students to be concerned with how animals are treated here on campus, but a certain amount of maturity and understanding is needed when discussing the subject.
