Animal Rights Activists Take Anti-Novartis Protest Too Far

Novartis (NVS) has had trouble for years with animal rights activists, and now things are getting nastier than ever:

Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella says the people who burned down his holiday home and defiled his family's graves are not criminals but "terrorists" beyond dialogue.

In an interview with the SonntagsBlick newspaper, the 55-year-old chief executive said the attacks have changed his life and that more needs to be done to rein in the animal-rights extremists believed responsible for the "wicked" acts.

Last week Vasella's home in Austria was set on fire. In July his mother's urn was stolen and his dead 19-year-old sister's grave was desecrated. Crosses bearing his name and that of his wife were placed in a Chur cemetery. Workers' cars have been torched and angry graffiti sprayed on walls.

"How far do things have to go before you can speak of terrorism?" Vasella told the newspaper.

I'd say that's far enough, definitely. If that's not being done with intent to terrorize, then what? One idiotic part of the whole business is that the protesters seem to be trying to get Novartis to stop working with Huntingdon Life Sciences, the British animal testing company. (Similar tactics have been used elsewhere). But Novartis says that they currently have no relationship at all with HLS, and haven't for several years.

Mere statements of dull fact, though, won't make a dent in the self-righteousness of the sorts of people who think that spray-painting gravestones is a blow for justice.

Comments

[Squeaky:]

While I agree that the actions of this group of animal rights activists are completely wrong (and criminal), don't be so easily deceived. Novartis does have enough skeletons in its closet when it comes to animal rights violations (and probably other testing that would also raise an eyebrow).

Aug 12 11:13 AM

[SHAC:]

Statement from SHAC re incidents in Switzerland and Austria

We understand the upset that these incidents have caused to Daniel Vasella and his family, but SHAC are not responsible for this, we have thousands of supporters around the world. Many of which never contact us or have anything to do with us directly, but they support our goals of closing HLS and stopping animal testing.

SHAC is a legal, grass routes campaigning group, just because some unknown anti-vivisectionist/li... person(s) may have done this. (If it was actually done by animal rights people), it's because of their frustration of Novartis' continued use of HLS despite 7 exposes over 12 years showing animal cruelty and sloppy practices time and time again at HLS and the campaign against them by SHAC and many other organisations and individuals will continue on many different levels until they stop being a customer of HLS.

In the past two decades HLS have been infiltrated and exposed time and time again by journalists, animal rights campaigners and members of the public. Also a number of companies that breed lab animals for HLS have been exposed as well as their clients. Every single time vicious animal cruelty, fraud, incompetence and rule breaking has been exposed on a large scale. HLS workers have been caught on camera punching animals in the face and falsifying test data, they have been caught dealing illegal substances on company premises and workers have been drunk at work and killing animals due to neglect.

It was not than long ago that Novartis were caught up in one of the biggest animal testing scandals in history, the xenotranplantation scandal in 2000, which showed that primates were caused extreme suffering when pig hearts were transplanted into them, see: www.shac.net/HLS/expos....

Recently, Polish officials are investigating the deaths of a number of people who were recruited to take part in a clinical trial of a new Novartis avian flu vaccine trial. Also past deaths and serve side effects of other Novartis drugs such as Exjade, Lamisil, Prexige and Zelnorm, to name a few., calls in to question the validity of animal 'safety' testing.

Lobbyists spend millions to influence health care and with hundreds of billions profit made worldwide, it's a large vested interest to keep the more and more new drugs coming.

Scientists working for pharmaceutical companies dream up names of new diseases and lists of symptoms every day of the year. This in no way means there are millions of diseases; only that they can now patent a chemical to be marketed as a panacea or "cure" for that targeted "disease" -- that is, until enough people are harmed or killed by the drug and it is finally taken off the market. In the UK adverse drug side effects affect over a million people at the cost of over £2 billion to the taxpayer/NHS. For examples of more drug disasters, see: www.shac.net/science/d...

It's in the interests of governments and big pharma for humans to be ill. Money is not made from 'treating' healthy people who don't need their drugs. Vivisection is a Victorian science and we are now in the 21st century. Isn't it about time we stopped the misery of vivisection, both to human animals and non-human animals?

Pharma companies like Novartis hide behind secrecy and have strong links to governments and large organisations. Are they really acting in our best interests? Hundreds of billions of profit worldwide to make more drugs is a very large vested interest and we believe these greedy companies have lost their way and are not humanitarian or compassionate... We allow millions of people to die from lack of clean drinking water, food and through political wars. We all need to look at what we allow to happen in our name and be more responsible.

SHAC and all other animal rights groups are totally opposed to animal research, (both medical and non-medical) even if it worked for moral reasons. SHAC will continue to target and protest any company that is involved with HLS, especially the main customers like Novartis, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GSK, etc.

We are willing to meet with Novartis and discuss these issues, but our campaign against them will continue until they stop using HLS. Novartis have allegedly stated that they haven't used HLS for a while; it seems strange then that they have not contacted the campaign to ask for the world-wide protests outside their offices and sites to stop? They have not had any communication with the campaign over nearly a decade, it seems very strange that they have decided to end their silence without having to prove their claims.

Aug 12 06:22 PM