This is interesting:

Dario Ringach, an associate neurobiology professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, decided this month to give up his research on primates because of pressure put on him, his neighborhood, and his family by the UCLA Primate Freedom Project, which seeks to stop research that harms animals.

Anti-animal research groups are trumpeting Ringach’s move as a victory, while some researchers are worried that it could embolden such groups to use more extreme tactics. . . .

Colleagues suggested that Ringach, who did not return e-mails seeking comment, was spooked by an attack on a colleague. In June, the Animal Liberation Front took credit for trying to put a Molotov cocktail on the doorstep of Lynn Fairbanks, another UCLA researcher who does experimentation on animals. The explosive was accidentally placed on the doorstep of Fairbanks’s elderly neighbor’s house, and did not detonate.

I think that the tactic of threatening children (which I've posted about infra), while nothing new to animal rights activists, works as a "twofer." That's because it simultaneously accomplishes both of the following:

1. It intimidates the intended audience (all animal researchers, and especially other researchers who might so much as think about doing animal research); and

2. It advances the nihilistic ideology that there is no moral distinction between humans and animals.

These observations are not new for me, and I'm sure others have made them too. But the reason I decided to write this post was that the other day I had the occasion to talk to a genetics researcher who works in the United States but who comes from another country, and closely follows what goes on in his field worldwide. He told me that the animal research work is constantly, relentlessly, being shifted to China. (You know... "Outsourcing.")

In an amazing coincidence, the outsourcing of animal research to China is also a "twofer":

1. In China, the concept of animal rights is a laugh (even more of a laugh than human rights, which is also a laugh). This means animal research facilities are not subject to policing or inspections as they are in the West.

2. Chinese researchers are meticulous and hard-working, and cost a fraction of their American counterparts.

While it was news to me to hear about the outsourcing of animal research, it occurs to me that the animal rights activists have to be savvy enough to know about it, so I have to assume it's all part of some "think-globally," grand international animal rights strategy.

I mean, surely they're planning to travel to China and stage huge demonstrations, vandalize research facilities, and threaten the children of the Chinese researchers, right?

Such idealism and bravery are touching.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post! Welcome all.

In an update, Glenn quotes Jim Bennett on China's own form of nihilism:

...in its own way China also upholds the principle that there is no ethical difference between human and animals.

ADDITIONAL NOTE ON "OUTSOURCING": Please bear in mind that the word "outsourcing" was my choice of phraseology and not that of the researcher I spoke with. I'm neither an economist nor a scientific researcher, and I used the word pretty much the way I'd use it in casual conversation, but looking further this morning, I see that within this context it could very well be taken to imply a deliberate decision taken by American companies, whereas what the researcher described was more along the lines of the deliberate entry into the research market by the Chinese. Work done there, but not specifically for American companies, might not fit the formal definition of "outsourcing." Regarding scientific research, Wikipedia describes outsourcing thusly:

This is treated as a niche sector in outsourcing. The research processes are outsourced in full or in parts. Whether it is research in nanotechnology or research in genetics, the process is viable for outsourcing. Generally larger research projects are cut into various sub projects or tasks. The outsourcing is then carried out based on the viability and competitiveness of the outsourcing destinations. Thus exploiting the competitiveness available at various parts of the world into a single large project. The research process outsourcing (RPO) is also known as Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), as it calls for the application of specialized knowledge of a high level. The KPO typically involves a component of Analysis Proves Outsourcing (APO) and Research Process Outsourcing (RPO). General Electric is one of the pioneers in RPO.

However, even though I am not a scientific researcher, what the scientist told me is confirmed by news reports like this:

GLADYS Hammond was a kindly woman who lived in the English county of Staffordshire. When she died seven years ago, her family buried her in a quiet village churchyard, a fitting resting place for this elderly, unassuming woman. But then in October this year, her remains were dug up and stolen. Why?

Because her daughter was married to a man who owned a share in a farm that bred guinea pigs for medical research.

The fate of Gladys Hammond is playing right into the hands of China and Singapore in their push to develop biotechnology sectors.

The incident was the trump card in a campaign of abuse and intimidation by animal rights extremists. For six years, the family that ran the farm and those connected to them had been subjected to death threats, hate mail, malicious phone calls, hoax bombs and arson attacks. Suppliers were similarly targeted: one was hit by a brick thrown through a window and endured an anonymous campaign that he was a paedophile.

But the theft of Gladys Hammond's remains was the last straw. After 30 years of breeding guinea pigs, the family decided to stop.

It has been estimated that 10-15 per cent of the costs of drug discovery in the US and Britain goes towards animal testing — the total cost of bringing a new drug to the market can be more than $US1 billion ($A1.3 billion). Harassment of animal testing laboratories, the scientists associated with them and the businesses that breed animals for research has significantly added to costs. How to get around this problem? Increasingly, outsourcing to Asia will be the answer. Asia's authoritarian governments that clamp down on troublesome pressure groups and muzzle inquisitive media, and Asia's cost competitiveness, will all prove a big attraction.

China already supplies most of the world's primates for animal testing and a monkey used in China in pre-clinical testing costs about one fifth of the $US5000 that US researchers typically must pay for a monkey sourced within their country.

US firm Bridge Pharmaceuticals (which was spun-off from the Stanford Research Institute in 2004) opened an animal-testing joint venture, Vital Bridge Zhongguancun Drug Development Laboratory, last month in Beijing's Zhongguancun Life Sciences Park. The facility is the first US Food and Drug Administration and Chinese State Food and Drug Administration compliant preclinical laboratory in China. The laboratory will act as a contract animal testing facility on behalf of client firms such as drug and cosmetic companies.

So maybe I was right in calling it that. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so quick to back away from my use of the word in the comment I left last night. (Should I retract my, um, "retraction"?)

I also find it fascinating to read in that last article about desecration of the dead as yet another tactic in the animal rights arsenal. Considering that animal rights activists scream bloody murder (literally) when humans desecrate pigs, it's probably another argument from moralistic nihilism.