Animal Rights Group Protests Guinea Pig Research By Robbing Grave

The remains of Gladys Hammond, who died at the age of 82 in 1997, have disappeared. Police recently arrested 5 suspects in connection with the case. Of those five, four of them had been arrested in the past for sometimes-violent harassment of Gladys' son-in-law who runs a farm raising guinea pigs for medical research. The terror campaign against the farm has been going on for 6 years and has included such things as arson, a pedophile smear campaign and now the defilement of the grave of a loved one. The five individuals have been released on bail after having been questioned by police. The remains of Ms. Hammond have not been found yet. The leader of the "Save Newchurch Guinea Pigs" campaign, John Holmes, has hailed Christopher Halls' decision to close the farm after this latest attack against him as a victory. Though Holmes couldn't justify the defilement, he said he could understand it, but "[w]e have to encourage any activist to return those remains. We cannot say any more than that."



This is just sick. This is a clear example of using terror to force political change, and in this case it worked. By destroying employee's cars, stealing the remains of their loved ones, setting fires, harassing them with phone calls, and just generally making life absolutely miserable for these people raising animals that help to save human lives, they have gotten the farm to close. Many are concerned these terrorists will now be emboldened in their tactics with this victory.

There is no good side to this story.

Related News Links:
society.guardian.co.uk

[edit on 9-28-2005 by junglejake]

[edit on 9-28-2005 by junglejake]

[edit on 1-10-2005 by asala]

This sounds like Animal Rights groups not Environmental Groups, your title is very misleading ... Sounds like the ALF not the ELF ...

Good point, sorry about that! ...Now I have to edit it again to correct some spelling error made in my haste to correct that... Just call me Dan Quayle

[edit on 9-28-2005 by junglejake]

These idiots in both movements do more damage to their cause then good. Any legitimate gripes are quickly forgotten when the acts of the extremists are braught to light and the extremists on the other end of the spectrum use that to make the whole movement look like they are off their rocker. I'm not really into "Animal Rights" per se as I know the benefits of Animal Research, it's the testing of cosmetics on animals I'm agains't. Testing a potentially life saving technique/drug/whatever I'm all for, anything else is cruelty IMO.

These guys when waaay overboard and should be prosecuted.

[edit on 28-9-2005 by sardion2000]

Sick bastards!

As people go, I've got less respect than most for the dead. But this is beyond pale, even for me! Grave robbing for the 'benefit' of tiny rodents?

What a bunchy of tools.

Look around at the world, people, and do us all a favor by re-assessing your priorities. I mean, c'mon. Guinea pigs? There's about a million other issues that could benefit from such over-the-top dedication the cause displayed in this case.

Perspective, get some!

I'm not fond of "environmentalists" or "animal rights" folks. They are peas in a pod. They're agenda is beyond responsible and merely a means to act out a severe pathology. I would like to point out, however, that without the practice of grave robbing the medical profession would probably be about one hundred years behind where it is now.

How about A for Anatomy? As every doctor knows, this is anything but a grey area in the history of medicine. It spawned a cottage industry in the 19th century - grave robbing.

Here's how Dr. Duffin tells it: "As diseases became increasingly anatomical, medicine had to move in the same direction. Anatomy and dissection suddenly became not only interesting but essential for medical training ... new problems soon arose because of the limited supply of bodies. Dissection may have become acceptable to academics, but the general public was not eager to see the corpses of its loved ones displayed and opened for instruction."

Fabled in song and story, this occupation satisfied the growing market for fresh bodies with the newly buried corpses of private citizens. The public was offended by the outrageous practice and turned on the grave robbers' clients too. In the U.S., physicians' homes and medical schools were mobbed and burned and wealthy citizens posted sentries to protect family plots from violation.

medicalpost.com

[edit on 2005/9/28 by GradyPhilpott]

Same thing goes for Right to Life groups and Right to Bear Arms groups and well just about any special interest group out there, whats your point grady? Every group has their pathological extremists. They usually get tossed out and form their own groups.

The way I see it, why not dig up and remove the bones of Prescott Bush as a forceful act to stop an unjust war. Now, as asinine as that statement sounds, what these people did is basically the same thing, but instead of protesting a real world issue, they are protesting the betterment of medicine and the furthering of humanity. Bright people. Really bright. I hope that none of these activists have ever used even so much as an aspirin, because, you know, that stuff has been tested on ANIMALS.

Animal rights activists have never made any sense to me. They kill people, blow up research facilities, free diseased animals into the general population, and generally play the role of major annoyance to all of those who would seek to better mankind. Protesting animal testing is like protesting world peace - completely moronic.

I am still amazed with the head of the Save Newchurch Guinea Pigs campaign, John Holmes, tried to justify the stealing of a corpse to make your point about rodent research.

What's really scary here is that the terrorists seem to have won. If you read to the end of the article, the scientists who used these overgrown rats in research are even backtracking, saying, yeah, tons of discoveries have been made saving human lives as a result of such research, but we need to change and no longer experiment on non-humans. The underlying inflection probably being, "because we don't want to come home one day to hear that the child we lost when she was 6 was dug up, or our dead husband or wives' graves have been defiled."

What can I say, terrorism really upsets me, and that is exactly what this is. Granted, they're not convincing promising young college age students and the mentally handicapped to strap bombs to themselves and blow up as many people as they can, they're just creating fear through destruction and emotional assassination.