A militant animal rights activist referred to the notion of murdering medical researchers in order to save laboratory animals as a “morally justifiable solution.” 

Jerry Vlasak, co-founder and spokesman for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, which provides information about the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) and other militant animal rights movements, made the remark during his testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on October 26, 2005.

Vlasak made similar comments in 2003, when he told an audience at an animal rights conference in Los Angles that the assassination of scientists working in biomedical research would save millions of animals’ lives.  “I think violence is part of the struggle against oppression.  If something bad happens to these people [animal researchers], it will discourage others.  It is inevitable that violence will be used in the struggle and that it will be effective,” Vlasak Said. 

“I don’t think you’d have to kill -- assassinate -- too many vivisectors,” Vlasak continued, “before you would see a marked decrease in the amount of vivisection going on.  And I think for five lives, ten lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, two million, ten million non-human lives.”  In July 2004, Vlasak, a heart surgeon, was banned from entering Britain for these remarks.

A day before Vlasak’s testimony, the North American Animal Liberation Press Office posted a “Communiqué from ALF activists” on its Web site saying that ALF called in a bomb threat to the a hotel in Anaheim, California, in order to prevent a representative for Huntingdon Life Sciences, SHAC’s main target, from speaking at a conference there.  According to the communiqué, an ALF activists told the concierge, “You’ve allowed HLS to come into your hotel, now you will pay the price…If [name deleted] from HLS takes the stage, everyone dies.”

Five days later, on October 30, 2005, ALF claimed responsibility for placing a device resembling a bomb on the doorstep of a veterinarian’s house in Chino Hills, California.  Police discovered that the device was not real after evacuating about two dozen homes.  ALF’s communiqué claiming responsibility for the incident was also posted to the North American Animal Liberation Press Office Web site.