The Misguided

It’s time for the authorities to put a stop to the so-called Animal Liberation Front, which over the weekend broke into laboratories at the University of California, Riverside, stole hundreds of animals being used in research and did several hundred thousand dollars worth of damage in the process. The misguided individuals who committed this crime set back important medical research. They are concerned about animals, but they apparently have no concern for people.

No one wants to see animals mistreated, but, frankly, we’re more concerned about the human beings who suffer from cancer and other diseases that the researchers are trying to cure.

The Riverside raid was the latest and the largest of nearly two dozen such episodes in this country, Canada and Great Britain over the last few years. The City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte was hit last December, and the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance before that. The demented people who carry out these raids take great pride in their supposed humanitarian acts, so it should not be hard for the police to find them and for local prosecutors to bring them to trial.