‘Strike Hard and Fast’: Animal Rights Group Sends ‘Bloody AIDS-Tainted Razor Blades’ to Researcher

The animal rights group The Justice Department was hoping to send a message to UCLA researcher David Jentsch. Their medium? "Bloody, AIDS-tainted razor blades," says the university. In response, another activist group condoned the actions and said violence is "required."

UCLA spokesman Phil Hampton told the L.A. times that Jentsch, a neuroscientist, received the package earlier this month. The group apparently does not approve of Jentsch's work on rodents and primates.

Fellow animal rights group North American Animal Liberation, which works as a sort of animal rights aggregation group, claims to have obtained "anonymous communiques" detailing the Justice Department's thoughts and plans.

One reads in part:

We are the past generation of animal liberationists, but we will now be the future, striking at the heart of the vivisection industry, and if we have to go back to egg timers and insence sticks then we will. Mark our words, we will destroy all who fall into our focus. This is a call for all those who feel the same, the people from campaigns past, the people who never got caught, and those who did. the animals still need our help so we must strike hard and fast. This will be a turning point.

While another claims responsibility for the razor-blade package:

The Justice Department at UCLA sent bloody AIDS tainted razor blades to David Jentsch at [xxxxx] Valley Vista boulevard in the town of Sherman Oaks, California; instead he should be living in hell which is where he will eventually end up desirably sooner rather than later. He has no business addicting primates to phencyclidine known on the streets as PCP and other street drugs using grant money from the federal government. Confining primates to puny filthy cages then removing them to give them their fix of PCP when primates would not get addicted if it weren't for Frankenstein's like Jentsch. How would Jentsch like the same thing he does to primates to be done to him? That would be justice.

The research both groups abhor seems to involve injecting animals with drugs. Gawker quotes the website BoingBoing, which says Jentsch's projects include "injecting vervets in 'squeeze cages' twice a day with high doses of PCP, then killing them and examining their brains; other projects involved similar procedures with methamphetamine."

That, North American Animal Liberation says, justifies force and violence.

"Indeed, every successful struggle against oppression, both historically and concurrently, has required the use of stringent force against the oppressor," the group says on its website. "If only legal and peaceful means, means utilized for more than 100 years against vivisectors, were effective, then there would be reason to the argument against the use of force."

The Times says the FBI and UCLA police are investigating the incident.