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Extremists are threatening to des troy an Edinburgh laboratory which
uses primates for medical research. Ironically, the threat has prompted
animal rights campaigners to join forces with their traditional adversary,
the Medical Research Council, to condemn the extremists. Such threats, warn
the moderates, are driving the whole debate about the use of animals in
medical research underground.

The threat is contained in a letter received by The Scotsman in December.
Headed ‘ALF (Animal Liberation Front) press release’, the letter warns that
the ‘primate unit’ belonging to the MRC Reproductive Biology Unit ‘must
close within 16 weeks or (it) will be destroyed’. It also claims that the
ALF is responsible for the recent wave of fire bombings in Scotland. These
included attacks on the MRC Reproductive Biology Unit and on an outstation
of the Institute of Ecology in Banchory (This Week, 14 December 1991).

The threat could be a hoax, but police are treating it ‘very seriously’.
The unit’s director, Dennis Lincoln, says he has no intention of complying
with the ultimatum and that security has been tightened.

Robin Webb, spokesman for the ALF, could not vouch for the letter’s
authenticity but said that ‘the premises would be a legitimate ALF target,
as they were in November’. He was confident that the fire bombings were
‘the result of ALF action’.

In a joint statement, the Medical Research Council and Advocates for
Animals, a moderate animal rights group, call for the ‘moral issue’ of animals
in medical research ‘to be discussed openly without fear of retribution’.
Animal Aid and the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection have also
condemned both the threat and the fire bomb attacks.

The Edinburgh unit is one of a number of British research centres highlighted
in a recent report by Advocates for Animals (This Week, 23 November 1991).
The report – the first of a three-part investigation into the use of animals
in medical research – accuses the unit of having performed ‘unjustified’
experiments on marmosets as part of a study of sexual behaviour.

The campaigners now fear that their public denouncement of the unit
may have acted as a cue for the extremist ALF. When the report was released
last November, it sparked a flurry of media interest; within two weeks the
unit suffered a fire bomb attack. As yet there is no proven link, but, says
Lincoln, ‘the timing was rather close’.

Les Ward, director of Advocates for Animals, said: ‘We have to accept
the possibility that our report may have put the unit at risk’. As a result,
Advocates for Animals is rethinking its policy on public debate. It is unlikely
that the second and third parts of the report, due out later this month,
will be released to the press. Instead, they will be sent directly to the
Home Office.

Friction between moderate animal rights groups and the ALF has long
been on the increase. But the recent ALF campaign in Scotland has greatly
deepened existing divisions. ‘When the public sees idiots planting fire
bombs, every animal rights organisation in Britain is tarnished,’ said Ward.