Researchers and students staged a rally on the UCLA campus yesterday in support of animal research.

The rally was organised by the new University of California, Los Angeles branch of Pro-Test, a UK group founded in Oxford which supports animal research. A group of about 40 animal rights protesters held a rally opposite the Pro-Test event, which attracted over 400 people, <a href=“”https://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-animals23-2009apr23,0,3197423.story">according to the Los Angeles Times.

UCLA neuroscientist David Jentsch, the victim of a car bombing last month, founded UCLA Pro-Test. The North American Animal Liberation Press Office posted a ‘communiqué’ from a group calling itself the Animal Liberation Brigade taking credit for the attack and threatening to harm Jentsch.

“I hope this rally lessens the sense of helplessness and fear that has pervaded our community,” Jentsch said (UCLA newsroom). “We’re just not going to take the harassment anymore.”

Nature also interviewed him last week.

A member of UCLA’s Animal Law Society told a Science reporter that violence gave other animal rights activists “a bad name.”

No arrests have been made in the car bombing case yet, though the FBI did report arrests in other animal rights-related cases this week and in February. The FBI is offering a reward of $75,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the Jentsch case.

Video below the fold.