The Animal Rights Group targets the home of the NIH Director Science
Late last month, hundreds of people in two suburbs of Washington DC received a letter in the mail alleging that one of their neighbors was involved in the exploitation of animals in a government laboratory. Science has learned that letters sent by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) addressed Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Stephen Finland, a NIH researcher, revealing their home addresses and phone numbers and urging their neighbors to call and visit them. The tactic is the latest attempt by an animal rights organization to stop behavioral testing on monkeys at the Maryland Laboratory in Poolesville, Finland, and critics say it crosses the line.
“It’s irresponsible and dangerous,” says Tom Holder, director of Speaking of Research, a British organization that supports the use of animals in scientific laboratories. He said the dissemination of this type of information in the past has encouraged animal rights groups to vandalize homes and even threaten the lives of researchers. “When you start linking addresses and giving them to unknown audiences, you’re putting someone at risk.”
PETA began targeting the Finnish laboratory in 2014. His team is researching how the early environment shapes behavior, work that includes weaning young monkeys, measuring alcohol dependence, and monitoring long-term stress levels. PETA claims that the experiments are inhumane. Last fall, it published more than 250 ads in DC transit stations and newspapers accusing the NIH of wasting taxpayer money to traumatize “monkey babies by tearing them away at birth, intimidating them with loud noises and false snakes, and making them addicted to alcohol.” In December, four members Congress asked the NIH to examine the laboratory. A month later, Collins said his agency had investigated the allegations and no major problems were found.
So PETA took things to a new level. “I’m writing to share annoying information about one of your neighbors,” the letters begin. They describe Finland’s work as a “cruel psychological experiment”, equating it with torture and child abuse. PETA sent letters (including This targeted to Collins, but the deleted data will be visible) to everyone within a 2-3 mile radius of Collins ’and Finland’s homes, says author Alka Chandna, the group’s senior laboratory monitoring expert. “If I had a neighbor who did this, I’d know about it.” he says. “It’s similar to having a sexual predator in your neighborhood.”
The strategy is a dangerous escalation in PETA’s tactics, says David Jentsch, a neuroscientist at Binghamton’s New York State University whose work on substance abuse in vervet monkeys has made him an animal rights extremist target. When activists posted his home address on the Internet in 2009, he says, “I received a letter in the mail with a bunch of razor blades telling me how to kill me.” Shortly afterwards, he says, animal rights activists regularly began marching on his neighborhood and harassing his neighbors. “It was pure, undistorted rage and anger.” Jentsch eventually moved in and hired guards, but he has continued his research and has become a a vocal supporter for use in laboratory animals.
Chandna says PETA only shares information that anyone could find through online scams. “We’re just saying what’s already there,” he says. “We provide a public service.”
“These are the same excuses that animal rights activists used when they posted my information on the Internet,” Jentsch says. “If you want to discuss animal research, it should be done in a public area,” he says. “Instead, they take it to people’s homes. It’s out of bounds.”
Jentsch believes this tactic shows that PETA’s previous strategies have not attracted an audience. “PETA’s arguments about the value of science fail on their merits, so they resort to these deeply personal attacks. We see more of these types of tactics in the animal rights movement. They tell researchers, ‘We know where you live.'”
Holder says that Collins and Finland must remain strong. (Collins declined to comment on this story, and Finland did not respond to requests for comment.) “I hope they do not succumb to this pressure,” he says. “They need to defend the biomedical community and this important research.”