While British scientists have long battled with animal activists opposing (sometimes through violent means) research using animals, it seems that battle is heating up in the US now. Inside Higher Ed reports today that a UCLA neurobiologist, Dario Ringach, has announced that he’ll no longer do research using primates, after UCLA officials and colleagues say that he was harassed by phone and email by activists, and had people demonstrating outside his home. According to the article:

In an e-mail this month to several anti-animal research groups, Ringach wrote that “you win,” and asked that the groups “please don’t bother my family anymore.”

He may have also been frightened off by a move in June by the Animal Liberation Front, the article said. The group claimed it had planned to put a Molotov cocktail on the front doorstep of another UCLA researcher. But instead, they planted it at the wrong home. The device didn’t detonate.

The article gave a couple of examples of other protests by animal activists in the Midwest. In my five years in Boston, I haven’t heard of any major operation by animal activists here recently. But I don’t think Boston scientists are immune. This city seems like a prime target with so much biomedical and animal research going on here. What kind of an effect would the activists have, if any? Will other scientists like Ringach be frightened off or will they continue their research but be less open about their use of animals?

One way to avoid such potential conflict in the US is to do your animal or primate research in a far-away country, like China. I recently spoke with Paul Huang of MGH’s Cardiovascular Research Center. He told me about his collaboration with the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Peking University in Beijing, China. The institute, founded last year, has a primate facility that takes advantage of the huge number and low cost of monkeys in China. Huang’s group is now working with Chinese scientists to develop a primate model of metabolic disease. Through this collaboration, he has access to hundreds of animals. Not only are primates cheap and plentiful, but the climate in China is probably more open and amenable to primate research. But who knows? The world is getting smaller each day and it may only be a matter of time before the animal activist movements starts making its way to other parts of the globe.