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When Ingrid Newkirk, the founder of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), infamously asserted in 1986, "There is no rational basis for asserting that a human being has special rights: A rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a boy," few believed that she meant it literally. Surely, people thought, Newkirk and PETA understand that humans have far greater moral worth than animals. Actually, they don't understand that. In fact, it now appears that PETA's moral views have become so distorted and misanthropic that the organization sees no difference between eating a steak and cannibalizing a...

A Tufts University veterinary school student who cried foul about a canine research study found the school's dog-walking program abruptly shut down yesterday, apparently over concerns about animal-rights activists. The Grafton campus has been on a heightened state of alert since Dana Zenko and Tara Turner protested a research program in which several dogs are due to be killed so that intentional bone breaks can be studied as part of an effort to improve the treatment of fractures. Yesterday, Zenko and Turner went to the school to walk several dogs that are kept there to help students learn ``non-invasive'' veterinary...

December 7, 2003 Protesters Carry the Fight to Executives' Homes By ALEX MARKELS New York Times Late one recent evening, an undertaker dispatched a hearse to the home of a biomedical company employee to pick up her body. No one, however, had died. The woman who answered the door was very much alive, although the coffin was intended for her. Aghast, she suddenly realized that the undertaker had been duped by an animal rights radical into sending the hearse. If the goal was to scare her out of her wits, the tactic succeeded. Her voice cracked with fear as she...

Militant animal rights activists claimed responsibility for bombing two firms near San Francisco and threatened to target their staff and customers too. In an anonymous e-mail posted on the Internet, the shadowy Revolutionary Cells group took credit for a September 25 bombing of a health product distributor and for an August 28 pipe-bomb attack on a biotech firm. In their e-mail, posted on the website of Bite Back magazine, Revolutionary Cells threatened to double the size of its bombs targeting the companies in the future. "Today it is 10 pounds (of explosives), tomorrow 20....until your buildings are nothing more than...

<p>A militant animal rights group that claimed it bombed an Emeryville biotechnology firm in August is taking responsibility for Friday's explosion at Shaklee Inc.'s offices in Pleasanton -- warning that next time the bombs will be bigger and more damaging.</p>

SAN FRANCISCO - The FBI said Friday it has opened a domestic terrorism investigation a day after two small bombs damaged the headquarters of biotechnology company Chiron Corp. The bombs were detonated between 2:55 a.m. and 4 a.m. Thursday at the company's Emeryville campus. No one was injured and damage was limited to a few broken windows. Chiron and its executives have been confronted in recent weeks by animal rights activists protesting the company's relationship with a New Jersey lab which tests drugs on animals. On Friday, an animal rights group calling itself variously the "Animal Liberation Brigade" and the...

<p>Emeryville -- UPDATE: An animal rights activist group called the Revolutionary Cells took responsibility today for planting a pair of pipe bombs that exploded early Thursday at the Emeryville biotechnology firm Chiron Corp., causing minor damage.</p> <p>In a statement posted on the Web site of Biteback Magazine, the previously unknown group said members had "descended on the animal-killing scum Chiron'' early Thursday. "We left them with a small surprise of two pipe bombs filled with an ammonium nitrate slurry with redundant timers,'' the statement said.</p>

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<p>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Two small bombs exploded and shattered windows early Thursday morning on the campus of biotechnology company Chiron Corp., authorities said.</p> <p>Nobody was hurt and authorities said damage was minimal.</p> <p>While police and company officials declined to speculate on who may have been behind the bombing, Emeryville-based Chiron and its executives have been harassed in recent weeks by animal rights activists protesting the company's relationship with Huntingdon Life Sciences, which conducts animal experiments.</p>

Secret French move to block animal-testing ban Andrew Osborn in Brussels and Amelia Gentleman in Paris Tuesday August 19, 2003 The Guardian France, home to the world's largest cosmetics company, L'Oréal, has quietly launched a legal action aimed at killing off a historic EU ban on animal-tested cosmetics, the Guardian has learned. The EU measure, agreed this year after 13 years of negotiations, will phase in a near-total ban on the sale of animal-tested cosmetic products throughout the EU from 2009 and put a stop to all animal testing. It has been hailed as one of the most significant pieces...

Our fellow creatures have feelings - so we should give them rights too While much of the talk in big science this past year has centred on new breakthroughs in biotechnology, nanotechnology, computers and more esoteric questions such as the age of our universe, a quieter story has been unfolding behind the scenes in laboratories around the world - one whose impact on human perception and our understanding of the world is likely to be even more profound. And, strangely, the companies sponsoring the research are McDonald's, Burger King, KFC and other fast food purveyors. Pressured by animal rights activists...

The hit movie Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde is darling, as is its star Reese Witherspoon. Any heterosexual male who doesn't have a crush on her, well, isn't a heterosexual male. Unfortunately, the film carries a message that's not only false but, to the extent it gains currency, lethal. It says animal testing is not only immoral but worthless. In the beginning, Witherspoon's ditsy but determined character Elle Woods sets out to find the mother of Bruiser, her cute Chihuahua with a wardrobe that puts Imelda Marcos to shame. But Bruiser's mom turns out to be a test...

Al Gore’s Deadly Animal Test Plan and the Scientist Who Can Stop ItAfter his plan to resume whaling and his massive pig farm bailout, the vice president’s new plan to kill 800,000 animals in pointless tests may be his worst yet.In the early months of 1999, while the nation’s attention was focused on President Clinton’s problems, Vice President Al Gore was pushing a plan that aims to kill 800,000 animals in barbaric and useless tests, beginning before the year is out. It began as a part of Gore’s efforts to appear concerned about the environment. Seizing on an old Environmental...

OSAMA BIN LADEN and his terrorist organisation were not only investigating the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons against the West, they had conducted preliminary experiments on animals. These unnerving revelations are the conclusion of detailed examination of documents discovered by The Times in abandoned al-Qaeda houses in Kabul last month. The documents, which have been translated in full, prove that among other atrocities, al-Qaeda was studying how to produce botulin poison in batches strong enough to kill 2,000 people. The hundreds of pages of photocopied, handwritten and printed matter were in a mixture of Arabic, Urdu, Persian, Mandarin, ...