LONDON -- The threat of attacks by Islamic extremists is not the only terrorist threat to our society. Animal-rights extremists have been threatening firms that carry out experiments on animals. Animal rightists do not regard as justification for the research the fact that most initial tests are conducted on mice and rats, and only at later stages on a limited number of primates.
Nor do they think it relevant that mice and rats are generally regarded as vermin that spread diseases in society. The animal rightists also refuse to take any account of the misery caused by diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, which pharmaceutical companies are trying to treat by developing new drugs. For them, animals seem to matter more than humans.
Animal rightists are entitled to their views in a free society, but this does not entitle them to flout the law and terrorize companies and their staffs involved in this research. Terrorist attacks on directors and staff of Huntingdon Life Sciences, a British firm that conducts tests on animals for pharmaceutical companies, have included not only threats to the lives and properties of directors and staff of the company but also assaults and destruction of property.