Saturday, November 27, 2010
UCLA researcher says he won't be deterred by animal activists' attacks
When UCLA neuroscientist J. David Jentsch was a grad student, he never expected his life as an academic would require around-the-clock armed guards, or a closed-circuit TV inside his bedroom so he could keep constant watch over his home.
But the high-powered security proved necessary again this month when the researcher, who experiments on monkeys, opened a letter left in his mailbox to discover razor blades and a death threat.
"We follow you on campus," Jentsch recalled the note reading. "One day, when you're walking by, we'll come up behind you, and cut your throat."
Activists claimed the razors were tainted with AIDS, though it hasn't been confirmed by officials. University officials have said the latest threat, confirmed by UCLA on Tuesday, is under investigation by the FBI and UCLA police.
But the 38-year-old professor has been through this before. Last year, he woke up to an orange flash and a car alarm. He ran outside to find his car had been blown up.
Twice a month, animal rights activists in ski masks gather outside his home, chanting "murder." On Halloween, neighborhood trick-or-treaters were handed flyers with images of bloodied animal subjects.
"If you go to the house down the street, there's a monster who lives there," children were told.
The tactics, Jentsch said in an interview inside his office, are part of an intensifying effort by extremists to halt animal research at the university. Molotov-cocktail-like devices have been left near researchers' homes and under their cars, and in one case, a professor's window was smashed and a garden hose inserted to flood her home....