The ALF Strikes in Iowa! 401 Animals Rescued! Labs Smashed!

The Animal Liberation Front is claiming responsibility for the liberation of 401 animals from the University of Iowa in the early hours of November 14th, 2004. All animals on the third floor of the UI psychology department -- 88 mice and 313 rats -- were removed, examined and treated by a sympathetic veterinarian, and placed in loving homes.

Additionally, two animal labs and three vivisector's offices were entered and all contents relating to animal research were destroyed.

These are:

4th Floor - Spence Labs: Vivisector Ed Wasserman's lab entered. Dozens of computers and devices used in experiments on live pigeons were destroyed.

Basement - Spence Labs: Lab of vivisector Mark Blumburg and others entered. Surgical equipment and small animal stereotaxic devices, as well as "shock boxes" and other instruments of torture destroyed.

4th Floor - Seashore Hall Primate researcher Joshua Rodefer's office entered. Computer discs, hard drives, paperwork and photos showing Rodefer's work confining drug addicted primates in small glass boxes removed. The remaining paperwork detailing his monstrous work addicting primates and rats to narcotics was soaked in acid and the computer destroyed.

1st Floor - Seashore Hall Primate researcher Amy Poremba's office entered. Computers destroyed, documents removed, and the remainder soaked in acid.

This raid was carried out to halt the barbaric research of the UI Psychology Department's 7 primary animal researchers: Professors Poremba, Freeman, Blumburg, Johnson, Robinson, Rodefer and Wasserman.

This was not thoughtless vandalism but a methodical effort to cripple the UI psychology department's animal research. Only equipment in rooms where animals were confined and tortured were targeted. Only computers belonging to or used in the work of vivisectors were destroyed. Only documents of animal researchers waere doused in acid. The acid a deliberately chosen paper dissolving agent. Our goal is total abolition of all animal exploitation. Achieved in the short term by delivering the 401 animals from UI's chamber of hell. And in the extended term by shutting down the labs through the erasing of research and equipment used in the barbaric practice of vivisection. The entire raid was a careful and deliberate 5-pronged assault on UI's animal research.

Behind the laboratory doors we found drug addicted rats, rats subjected to stress experiments involving loud noise, rats undergoing thirst experiments, unanesthetized rats with protruding surgical staples and oozing wounds, and mice and rats affixed with grotesque head implants. Inside the labs of UI's Psych Department, we found a bloody torture chamber showcasing the cruelest whims of our earth's sickest minds. Professors Freeman, Poremba, Rodefer, Johnson, Robinson, Blumburg, and Wasserman are monsters. Tonight 401 animals are spared their reach.

Our deepest sadness is reserved for the animals on the 4th Floor kept from our arms, those we were unable to save, including hundreds of mice and rats, pigeons, guinea pigs, and 8 primates.

No animals were released into the wild. All 401 were placed in comfortable, loving homes.

We acted as operatives not only of compassion, but good science. Animal research is not only cruel but hazardous -- as data derived from the animal models is not applicable to humans and therefore dangerous.

Our bypassing of UI's sophisticated, key card-access, 4-walled security system (perimeter, elevator, corridor, animal room) should be interpreted as a two-fold message:

1) Our utter seriousness in achieving animal liberation. 2) If you torture animals we will not be stopped from liberating them.

On the ears of these monsters who know only profit and blood, who hide behind unjust laws, our breath has been wasted. Justice for the victims of vivisection will be achieved not by the blows of boycott nor protest -- but of our sledgehammers to laboratory doors.

Let this message be clear to all who victimize the innocent: We're watching. And by axe, drill, or crowbar -- we're coming through your door.

Stop or be stopped.

A.L.F.