Prof. targeted by animal rights extremists speaks out

By Edythe London

For years, I have watched with growing concern as my UCLA colleagues have been subjected to increasing harassment, violence and threats by animal rights extremists. In the past 15 months, these attempts at intimidation have included two attacks by Molotov cocktail-type devices — none of which, thankfully, ignited — as well as rocks, phone and e-mail threats and several direct confrontations with young children.

Last September, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle informed readers that part of the research I have been doing to understand and treat nicotine addiction among adolescents is done on primates. I was instantly on my guard. Would I be next?

The answer came last week when the Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for vandalism that caused between $20,000 and $30,000 worth of damage to my home after extremists broke a window and inserted a garden hose, flooding the interior.

Later, in a public statement addressed to me, the extremists said they had been torn between flooding my house or setting it afire. Maybe I should feel lucky.

Having come to the United States as the child of Holocaust survivors who had lost almost everything, I appreciate that perhaps "only in America" could I have fulfilled my dream of becoming a biomedical scientist, supported in doing research to reduce human suffering. But it is difficult for me to understand why the same country that was founded on the idea of freedom for all gives rise to an organization like the Animal Liberation Front, a shadowy group identified by the FBI as a domestic terrorism threat.

I have devoted my career to understanding how nicotine, methamphetamine and other drugs can hijack brain chemistry and leave affected individuals at the mercy of their addiction. My personal connection to addiction is rooted in the untimely death of my father, who died of complications from nicotine dependence.

Animal studies allow us to test potential treatments without confounding factors, such as prior drug use and other experiences that complicate human studies. More importantly, they allow us to test potentially lifesaving treatments before they are considered safe to test in humans. My colleagues and I place a huge value on the welfare of our research subjects. All our studies comply with federal laws designed to ensure humane care.

Since the incident at my house, our research has gotten a lot of attention. Some anti-smoking groups have raised questions about the fact that our work was funded by Philip Morris USA. Is it moral to allow the tobacco industry to fund research on addiction? My view is that the problem of tobacco dependence is enormous, and the resources available for research on the problem are limited. It would therefore be immoral to decline an opportunity to increase our knowledge about addiction and develop new treatments for quitting smoking, especially when teens are involved.

Thousands of other scientists use laboratory animals in other research, giving hope to those afflicted with a wide variety of ailments. Already, one scientist at UCLA has announced that he will not pursue potentially important studies involving how the brain receives information from the retina, for fear of violence from animal rights radicals. We must not allow these extremists to stop important research that advances the human condition.

London is a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and of molecular and medical pharmacology at the David Geffen School of Medicine. A longer version of this opinion piece appeared in the Los Angeles Times last week.