Animal Rights Extremists Target Medical Students
An animal rights group calling itself Negotiation is Over (NIO) is targeting undergraduate students who perform biomedical research on animals.
by Matthew Harwood (Security Management)
An animal rights group calling itself Negotiation is Over (NIO) is targeting undergraduate students who perform biomedical research on animals.
The Florida-based militant animal liberation organization, founded around 2009 by Camille Marino, finds its targets by promising $100 cash rewards to anyone who gives it a “vivisection student’s” name, picture, contact information, and evidence of animal experimentation. NIO activists have leafleted the campuses of Columbia University, Florida Atlantic University, New York University, the University of Florida-Gainesville, and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, making students aware of its campaign.
Once they have names, NIO activists contact the students and try to intimidate them into discontinuing their research. In a March 2011 blog post, Marino celebrated NIO’s first success of its “applied persuasion tactics,” which were carried out over a “long night of educational outreach.”
The case involved an undergrad researcher at Florida Atlantic University, who used fruit flies in her research. After constant electronic communication by NIO activists, the student issued a public statement “denouncing animal testing and my involvement in it.”
Marino is unapologetic about targeting biomedical students: “The weakest link in the chain is the student body,” she writes in a blog post titled “Bringing the War to the Student Body: The Soft-Bellied Target of the Vivisection Complex.”
In an e-mail exchange with Security Management, Marino defended her tactics. “The only thing I’m guilty [of] is leafleting and exercising my first amendment [sic] rights,” she wrote. “If I exposed bakers, you would consider it advertising. If I exposed politicians, you would call me a biographer. But I expose animal abusers. They don’t fear me. They fear exposure.”
If NIO’s actions were confined to free speech, Marino would be correct to defend her rights, but the courts have perceived her actions as potentially more serious. In September 2010, the Los Angeles Superior Court granted UCLA researcher Dr. David Jentsch a restraining order against Marino after she referred to Jentsch as Dr. David “Tiller” Jentsch, a reference to a murdered abortion provider, and published his contact information on the NIO Web site. Until September 2013, Marino cannot go near Jentsch, contact him, or obtain information about his whereabouts. She also cannot own or handle a gun. The order was issued because Marino posed “a credible threat of violence” to Jentsch.
Jentsch, who experiments on vervet monkeys to understand drug addiction and schizophrenia, has long been a target of militant activists. In 2009, his car was blown up outside his home. The next year, the Animal Liberation Front mailed him razor blades they claimed were infected with AIDS, along with a note. “We follow you on campus,” it read. “One day, when you’re walking by, we’ll come up behind you, and cut your throat.”
Animal rights activists constantly picket Jentsch’s gated home, which is protected by cameras and an armed guard.
Marino does not shy away from the idea of violence as a tactic. “Aspiring scientists envision curing cancer at the Mayo Clinic,” writes Marino on her Web site. “We need to impart a new vision: car bombs, 24/7 security cameras, embarrassing home demonstrations, threats, injuries, and fear. And, of course, these students need to realize that any personal risk they are willing to assume will also be visited upon their parents, children, and nearest & dearest loved ones. The time to reconsider is now.”
Marino is quoted by blogger Rhys Southan as calling on distressed activists to essentially become suicide bombers for the cause. It’s this kind of rhetoric that could persuade a lone wolf to act.
Jacquie Calnan, president and CEO of Americans for Medical Progress, which defends the humane use of animals in research, considers Marino a new and worrisome player in the world of militant animal rights activism. “To threaten students and say we’re going to give you a taste of what scientists receive so you won’t go into this career is evil genius,” she says.
John Beckman, vice president for public affairs at New York University (NYU), calls NIO’s tactics reprehensible. “Intimidation, harassment, and fear as methods for ‘persuasion’ [are] entirely unacceptable and intolerable,” he says.
Jentsch says universities need to take immediate action against militant activists and put them on the defensive. They need to use whatever legal mechanisms—civil or criminal—the system provides, including restraining orders.
The University of Florida (UF) has already done so. Last December the university took out trespass orders against Marino and her associate, Lisa Ann Grossman, after the two disrupted an event on the campus. In July, Grossman violated that order when she walked onto the campus to distribute the NIO flyers that promise reward money. The Florida State Attorney’s Office pressed trespass charges against Grossman, which could carry up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine.
Janine Sikes, UF’s director of public relations, says the university is preparing a communications package for students to inform them of NIO’s activities and what they should do if NIO contacts them. Already the university has notified UF personnel to be aware of their surroundings, report suspicious activity, and contact their supervisor if they receive any communications from animal rights activists.
Beckman tells Security Management that NYU will do everything in its power to protect its students, but it will not discuss specific measures.
Jentsch says universities have a moral responsibility to warn their students about NIO and other militant activists.
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Disclaimer: The information on this site is for educational and entertainment purposes only. There is no intent, express or implied, to promote illegal activities. We assume no liability for the potential actions of any third party. All data compiled here has been gathered from, and is available through, independent public sources.
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Categories: Tactics & Strategies
11 Comments »
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November 2nd, 2011 at 9:36 pm
Wake up John Beckman. Your university uses “intimidation, harassment, and fear” when conducting what it calls ‘science’ and this is entirely unacceptable and intolerable. We’ll stop when you stop, simple as that.
“Jentsch says universities have a moral responsibility to warn their students about NIO and other militant activists.” No, Jentsch and these universities have a moral responsibility to stop using animals in research. You want to experiment? Fine – but experiment on yourselves.
November 3rd, 2011 at 12:03 am
As a former drug addict, I can reassure you that nobody who is addicted to drugs uses PCP on a regular basis, let alone inject it into their bloodstreams for weeks on end like Jentsch does to feral primates. If Jentsch wants to help drug addicts like he claims, he should use that grant money he milks from taxpayers every single to year to fund community outreach and awareness and maybe study some actual human drug addicts and stop torturing helpless primates. This “research” he conducts is absolutely apalling and a complete waste of time and resources. Dr David Jentsch is a lunatic and anyone who takes him seriously or believes his bullshit should be ashamed of themselves.
November 3rd, 2011 at 4:14 am
‘TERRORISM’- this word alone is propaganda, appealing to the fears & emotions of people who are so apathetic they do not seek out facts for themselves. A weapon used by Jentsch & his colleagues & supporters when seeking to legitimise their own Terroris Activities!
Only befuddled thinking condones the idea of vivisection. It is experimentation for experimentation sake. As humankind, we overestimate our own worth & rights, to the detriment of the worth & rights of our fellow animals.
Sadists like Jentsch exploit & torment for the pleasure of doing so – & of course for the funds they garner to continue in this cruel farce! These terrorists cannot justify atrocities committed, either by purporting they are in the name of solid research – or that it is ok, because these Beings do not belong to the community of humankind!! Bullshit. They are sentient animals – just as we are – with Worth and with Rights. Deny them that Jentsch & company, and you deny those rights to yourselves!
November 3rd, 2011 at 4:17 am
‘TERRORISM’- this word alone is propaganda, appealing to the fears & emotions of people who are so apathetic they do not seek out facts for themselves. A weapon used by Jentsch & his colleagues & supporters when seeking to legitimise their own Terrorist Activities!
Only befuddled thinking condones the idea of vivisection. It is experimentation for experimentation sake. As humankind, we overestimate our own worth & rights, to the detriment of the worth & rights of our fellow animals.
Sadists like Jentsch exploit & torment for the pleasure of doing so – & of course for the funds they garner to continue in this cruel farce! These terrorists cannot justify atrocities committed, either by purporting they are in the name of solid research – or that it is ok, because these Beings do not belong to the community of humankind!! Bullshit. They are sentient animals – just as we are – with Worth and with Rights. Deny them that Jentsch & company, and you deny those rights to yourselves!
November 3rd, 2011 at 5:03 am
Jentsch couldn’t care less about drug addicts or those afflicted with schizophrenia. What he does is all about his career, as is the case with all vivisectors. Lack of empathy is lack of empathy.
November 3rd, 2011 at 9:44 pm
Next time you have a headache, and reach for an aspirin…I sincerely hope you put it down, or realize the hypocrisy of your ways. Denounce research, denounce any claim to modern medicine.
November 4th, 2011 at 10:00 am
kristen -
don’t waste my time
no one cares what you think
you don’t belong here
go fuck yourself
November 4th, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Kristen – you can call us hypocrites all you want, but the arguments against vivisection remain whether or not we use medication. Besides, it’s a mistake to believe that the majority of animal tests are performed in order to find cures. And, even if this was the case, whose to say that we wouldn’t have been able to find the cures using more reliable, non-animal methods (such as in-vitro, computer modeling, human clinical trials, microdosing in humans, etc). Indeed, animal testing wastes a lot of lives, both human and animal, as well as a lot of tax dollars. Did you know that 92% of drugs that test successfully in animals fail during human trials? Of the remaining 8%, 4% are recalled after hitting the shelves and the other 4% give us side effects! There are crucial differences among species that make extrapolating concrete data from animal tests virtually impossible. We’ve cured cancer in mice for God’s sake, but the drug simply didn’t work in humans..oops! What about penicillin? It kills animals, which actually delayed its release to the public until someone finally discovered that it works wonders in humans. There are many more examples such as these. Further, prescription drugs are the 4th leading cause of death in the United States. Let’s stop this insanity once and for all.
November 4th, 2011 at 12:24 pm
To summarize it for you:
There are two large gaps in your logic:
Fact:
1. Animals were used in tests.
Assumption:
2. Medicial advances were made.
Even if the assumption is granted for sake of argument, that does not mean that medical advances would not have been made
faster without animals.
Even if the assumption is granted for sake of argument that advances were made faster with animals, it does not mean that
this will be true now or in the future (especially with advances in alternatives).
And even if you assume all of the above, it still doesn’t make testing moral.
“It is wrong to do a certain harm that an uncertain good may result.”
December 21st, 2011 at 11:43 am
K -
Camille Marino has admitted that she has utilised technology directly produced by research into animals to save and indeed prolong her own life (Motorcycle Accident requiring ICU care.).
And I do fear you are guilty of something we in the real world like to call “Industrial grade bullshit”. See… I can name drugs that work the same in humans and in animals (Antibiotics for example). A lot of animal research is to find out how humans work because we have roughly similar physiologies and it is considered bad taste to kill humans to find out how they work.
In vitro modelling is often used. The problem being that there is no systemic or indeed structural interaction. Hepatocytes in culture are not like the hepatocytes in our body since there is no macrostructuring (like the triad structures)
Computer Modelling is far and away science fiction… and can only be developed from animal models. It’s utter madness! It’s like saying a Warp Drive is a suitable method of space travel. And any computer sufficiently complex to model a human is also sufficiently complex to model a human brain and is therefore for all intents and purposes sentient and would be unethical to experiment on.
Human Clinical trials are used anyways. Microdosing in humans is used anyways but is pointless for testing since we cannot kill humans to find out all the changes a drug effects.
Nor do you understand what blue sky research involves. For instance if someone wants to study liver degeneration in alcoholics do you really think we can go around killing alcoholics for their livers? Can you kill people who drink a lot of alcohol at different stages of usage to produce a timeline of changes? (Liver biopsies are painful and you don’t see macrochange or discover toxicity.)
Have any of you seen CSI? If you have then the average person knows that there are post-mortem changes on the body. So normal dead people can only tell us so much. I mean I work in India and the weather means that within 12 to 30 hours the normal structure of the human brain is porridge… I cannot do anything with that. Not unless the person dies with a team of people on hand to extract the brain. And you would be surprised how few people (Least of all your ilk) are willing to do such things for science. Nearly every single cadaver I have dissected has been an unclaimed body or donated by a scientist…
And the final gripe of your argument? What fucking drug has cured all cancer in mice? Cancer isn’t a cell. There are so many different sorts of cancer. Some are relatively easy to treat (skin cancer’s are removed in an outpatient procedure in 15 to 20 minutes under local anasthetic) while some are death sentences (pancreatic cancer) because of the nature of cancer spread. Each cancer is different and the cells involved are different and of different natures. I can show you a small round cell tumour and you wouldn’t even think it was weird when compared to a teratoma which grows teeth and hair…
Good god! Do you really think Cancer is just “One Kind of Thing”? And that all cancers respond to the same treatments and don’t take on characteristics of their parent cells?
Any treatment that kills cancer cells tends to kill normal cells as well. The mouse treatment you mention involves a sensitisation to a cell signalling factor normally found on cancerous prostate glands.
SIgh… Animal Lib don’t understand medicine. They really don’t. It’s not like you can poke a human being and come up with answers. Everything we have today comes from looking at animals and testing the very limits of what can be achieved and then seeing why these things fail. Knowing that allows us to treat humans. There are very few drugs where the mechanism is “I dont’ know” because of it.
December 21st, 2011 at 12:47 pm
Avicenna said: “Camille Marino has admitted that she has utilised technology directly produced by research into animals to save and indeed prolong her own life (Motorcycle Accident requiring ICU care.)”
Your point?
1- Technology is available now.
2- Animals were tortured by sadistic scum like you at some point in the development process of said technology.
Now, I understand from many of your prior diatribes documented on this site (and, amusingly, on your site as well) that you have severe limitations in cognition. So, allow me to help you. Fact 2 is not a condition upon which Fact 1 is dependent.
This means that:
3- You must prove that said advancement was dependent on such archaic and barbaric animal torture.
4- Since animal experimentation actually hampers progress, you cannot adequately fulfill condition 3.
For the record, I will not read anymore of your interminable drivel. You are an annoying and empathy-deficient parasite.
But knock yourself out anyway…
Camille