Hoax bombs, character assassination and property destruction. Such tactics have been the new violent trend animal rights activists have turned to in order to get their points across. While there is a clear understanding that an end to such harmful actions needs to occur, the solution should certainly not come from the government. Protesters and companies performing animal research need to establish common ground by peaceful negotiations so the beneficial role activists play in keeping animal testing companies in check can continue and thrive.
The steps to settle the battle between animal researchers and activists in Nature's editorial "Against Vicious Activism" has the government acting like a mediator for both parties. While the regulations it's enforcing cheer for better protection plans and coordination with US federal and state authorities to secure researchers, more violence will arise from the indirect communication between both parties. It is human nature to do what is forbidden, and for these extreme activists stricter laws and punishment that ban them from protesting will only lead them to think up of even more violent tactics that will have tremendous effects on the research world and its researchers. If these researchers don't personally step up and speak up about their problems nothing will resolve. The government needs to step back so animal researchers can make their own laws towards regulations and activism.
When has anything been settled with violence? Never. The extreme measures animal activists have been taking need to come to an end before anyone really gets hurt and bigger conflicts arise. The only way to do so is by having both the companies who use animals in their tests and animal rights activists sit down and speak directly to one another. Having a mediator, of any sort, only causes misunderstandings that lead no where. A peaceful agreement between both parties would hopefully bring an end to such extreme and unnecessary actions towards animal researchers, who in reality are just doing their job so humans can live care-free of viral or bacterial infections. The most ideal agreement would constitute of safer, improved approaches on animal research and clearer laws about animal protesting that would regulate the level of extremity taken by the activists.
Even though activists have gradually been taking more extreme measures to get their message through, these steps have actually helped keep companies in line towards their treatment and care of animals used in experiments. Without these people a lack of regulations for research animals and their use would exist. Through their actions laws such as the Animal Welfare Act have been passed, where the laboratory use of cats, dogs, and primates, guinea pigs, and rabbits are regulated. This act, plus the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare that watches over non-human-vertebrates, has caused researchers to modify their laboratories in a manner that models a place where anyone could walk in at any time and see what's going on. With this kind of pressure researchers have taken safer measures with all the animals they use in their studies.
Only a balance between animal researchers and animal rights could secure the continuation of finding cures that society desperately needs, especially for cancer and AIDS. Only through the direct communication of these two parties could the accomplishment of such agreement take place. No mediators, no outside help, no governments are needed for them to settle their difference and come to a peaceful accord where they can discuss and lay down a set of laws and regulations. Violence is not the answer.
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