On the 19th October the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) sent the following communique:
There a roughly 12 (give or take a few, they’ll have to find the exact number) of those UCLA vans driving around with unfired shotgun shells in their mufflers. Some of them may have ignited with the warm weather that we have been having. Most of them will eventually blow the mufflers straight off of those vans, it all depends on when the conditions are just right. The security cameras, the easily timed late night patrols, and the new laws don’t mean a thing to us. We WILL keep coming up with new ways to keep the primate tortures wondering.
According to the Daily Bruin, Nancy Greenstein of the UCPD (University of California Police Department) said the claims are not likely to be true. Admittedly an activist who loses count almost immediately after running out of fingers to count on (they say a dozen, but apparently aren’t sure if the baker was planting them) could be considered unlikely to actually have the planning to pull it off – however the risk to students remains. Hopefully this will turn out to be a case of all-talk-and-no-action. Phil Howard, a UCLA spokesman reported that, “The police department has looked into it and found no evidence to support the claims.”
These terror tactics are reminiscient of the old animal rights reports of tainting medical supplies, such as in the UK when animal rights activists reported that they had poisoned hundreds of tubes of Savlon cream – a claim that was fortunately another case of words-without-action.
We cannot deny that animal rights extemism is on the rise on the West Coast. Must we wait for the US to peak at the levels of violence that the UK reached, culminating in the grave-robbing of the remains of Gladys Hammond, the grand mother of a family that bred Guinea Pigs. Although the police remain a crucial part in the fight against animal rights extemism, the most important battle is to bring the public behind life-saving animal research and the only way in which this can be possible is through public outreach.
Cheers
Tom
Speaking of Research 
Fortunately it looks as if some scientists at UCLA are keen to discuss their work with members of the public. There’s a report in the UCLA student newspaper “The Daily Bruin” this week about research that is being undertaken to determine how the relationship between pesticide exposure and an individuals genetics affects their risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/2008/oct/28/medical-professor-receives-grant/
The project will use a range of methods, from epidemiological and genetic studies of Parkinson’s disease patients to experiments with genetically engineered flies (don’t tell Sarah Palin!) and mice. Discussing the project UCLA professor of epidemiology Beate Ritz said ““There is a lot of going back and forth, looking at the animals and cells and then looking to see if we see the same thing in the human population.”
Of course this is how most medical research works today, with different approaches complementing each other as scientists figure out what is happening in biological systems.