Animals Seized in Break-In at Loma Linda Medical Lab

A militant anti-vivisectionist group claimed responsibility Monday for invading a Loma Linda University Medical Center lab and taking at least seven dogs after splattering red paint on walls and office equipment.

No estimate was placed on the damage caused by the intruders who broke into a part of the lab called the farm, said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Stodelle.

In a statement issued shortly after the raid, Animal Liberation Front members attacked the procedures used by Dr. Leonard L. Bailey, the Loma Linda surgeon who performed a baboon-to-baby heart transplant on the infant Baby Fae in 1984.

The statement, accompanied by a photograph of a masked man with two Labrador retrievers, said the group had obtained files that they claim show “Baby Fae’s blood was mismatched with that of the baboon, how her blood was withdrawn for testing in adult amounts, and how pre-existing bacteria in her system was purposely allowed to remain.”

Bailey refused comment Monday but said after Baby Fae’s death that his failure to match blood types was unavoidable because baboons rarely have type O blood, Baby Fae’s blood type.

The San Bernardino-based Animal Liberation Front issued the statement through spokeswoman Margo Tannenbaum, claiming that members carried out the raid early Monday morning.

Stodelle said two adult Labrador retrievers, which had been used for breeding, and five younger, mixed-breed dogs, whose futures had not been decided, were taken in the break-in.

“Lab damage was extensive inside. In several rooms there was graffiti on the walls, saying things like ‘murderers,’ ‘torturers’ and references to ALF. References were made indicating they’ll be back,” Stodelle said.

Outside, where the dogs had been caged, padlock hasps were cut to get the animals out, he said. How the raiders got into the lab was still under investigation, he added.

Paint was splashed over floors, walls, typewriters, telephones, microwave ovens, televisions and other equipment, the lieutenant said.

He said there were a large number of goats outside the lab, but none appeared to be missing. The Animal Liberation Front statement contended that two goats were taken.

Stodelle said the break-in occurred sometime after the lab shut down Friday and before it opened Monday. The alarm system was not engaged, he said, because of recent problems with it.

In addition to the animals, Animal Liberation Front members claimed they seized “hundreds of pages of Dr. Leonard L. Bailey’s files that document painful experimentation involving heart transplant rejection in goats, dogs, pigs, sheep and baboons.”

Bailey transplanted the baboon heart in Baby Fae on Oct. 26, 1984. She died 20 days later.

Hospital spokeswoman Anita Rockwell emphasized: “No significant research materials are missing.”