Boston

Burning issue: earlier protests against primate research in Portland, Oregon. Credit: AP

A radical animal rights group calling itself the Justice Department last week mailed threatening letters, with razor blades dangerously positioned inside the envelopes, to scientists at primate research centres across the United States.

The letters, which were sent from Las Vegas, Nevada, with no return address, told the researchers: “You have until autumn of 2000 to release all your primate captives,” and added “if you do not heed our warning, your violence will be turned back upon you”.

The group's website includes a list of 83 scientists who had been targeted. Letters have turned up at the universities of Harvard, Emory, Tulane, California, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin, but no injuries have been reported.

The universities had already been contacted by the Foundation for Biomedical Research, a non-profit organization in Washington that endorses animal research and monitors the websites of extremist groups.

“The scientific community is not prepared for these kinds of terrorists acts, so we're doing anything we can to protect them,” said the foundation's president, Frankie Trull. “Until recently, there had been a sense of complacency regarding animal rights activists, but this incident should help scientists realize the threat to their personal safety and to their ability to conduct research.”

The threats are being taken seriously by the universities. The letters have been submitted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is handling the case, and university officials are calling for extra vigilance and, in some cases, heightened security measures.

Protests at Harvard's primate research centre in Southborough, Massachusetts, over the past two summers had already prompted the installation of additional surveillance equipment.

“This is an escalation of what has happened in the past, but fortunately no one was hurt,” said Don Gibbons, a spokesperson for Harvard Medical School, which last week received eight letters from the Justice Department.

Meanwhile, extra security guards have been stationed at the facility. Rocks were thrown at a security guard's car during a routine patrol last Thursday, but officials cannot link the incident to the threatening letters.

The Justice Department has not targeted US researchers before, although it has been active in Britain and Canada. Five years ago, it sent letter bombs to European companies, and two years later sent letters containing razor blades to hunting guides and furriers in Canada.

The best-known extremist group, the Animal Liberation Front, has said it was responsible for fire-bombing four vans belonging to a Rhode Island furrier two weeks ago. The group also claimed responsibility for a break-in at a Western Washington University laboratory two days later. Offices were ransacked and several dozen laboratory animals stolen.

“Acts of violence appear to be on the increase,” says Trull. Along with others who support the use of animals in medical research, she fears that activists are resorting to the same intimidation tactics used by anti-abortion extremists.

Andrew Rowan, senior vice-president of the Humane Society of the United States, says he is “unalterably opposed to these tactics. Threatening violence is contrary to the basic tenets of the animal protection movement, which is aimed at protecting all animals, including humans.”

Trull says that, although catching those who sent the letters is a job for law-enforcement agencies, scientists have a part to play. “The scientific community has to explain to the public why animal research is necessary,” she says. “Very few medical advances made this century did not depend, at least in part, on animal research, and that's not likely to change in the near future.”