Blasts Worry Biomed Firms

Two small explosions outside the Emeryville headquarters of Chiron Corp. Thursday morning put the region's biomedical industry and research universities on high alert. Police would not speculate about the motive or suspects in the early morning bomb attack. But some in the industry suspect that animal rights activists targeted Chiron over the company's association with an East Coast animal testing lab. "I wouldn't say people are scared, but I would say it is cause for concern," said Richard Van Sluyters, past president of the California Biomedical Research Association and a former neuroscience researcher. UC Berkeley, just a few miles from Chiron, locked down all animal facilities and swept through them looking for bombs, said Sluyters, the campus' associate dean for student affairs. The University of California, Davis -- a victim of anti-biotechnology vandalism in the late 1990s -- immediately stepped up security patrols at multiple campus facilities, where everything from mice to monkeys is used for medical research. "We will continue to be on alert but at the same time we are not expecting anything. ... We haven't received any direct threat or threatening activity here," said UC Davis spokesman Andy Fell. The explosions at two deserted Chiron buildings broke a window and damaged a few doors between 2:55 and 4 a.m., prompting the company to delay the start of the workday until noon as police assessed the scene, said company spokesman John Gallagher. "Our goal is really to get our operation up and running as quickly as possible," he said. Barbara Rich at Americans for Medical Progress in Alexandria, Va., was quick to accuse animal-rights activists of trying to intimidate medical researchers with the Chiron attack. "The object is ... to create fear and therefore silence," she said. Every major disease research program eventually includes animal testing, about 90 percent of which is on rodents, Rich said. Chiron, a biopharmaceutical company with more than 4,000 employees worldwide, is no different. It develops therapeutics and vaccines with a focus on infectious diseases and cancer treatment. Gallagher said Chiron used to contract for animal research with Huntingdon Life Sciences, a New Jersey-based product-development company that activists want to shut down for alleged abuse of test animals. Activists damaged the car of one company official and have protested for several months at the homes of Chiron employees, Gallagher said. Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, an animal-rights group that has targeted Chiron, posted a statement on the organization's Web site Thursday saying it had not received any communication that the explosions were related to animal rights. However, it supported such actions, saying Chiron "experiments have been the subject of some of the most horrific abuses" at Huntingdon. Gallagher declined to elaborate on the nature of Chiron's past animal testing at Huntingdon, which he said was not stopped because of pressure from activists. On Thursday, Chiron stepped up security at all its campuses, including its 50-employee manufacturing plant in Vacaville. Police in Vacaville reported no unusual problems or concerns in the biotech manufacturing hub. Genentech, another national biotech leader with a manufacturing facility in Vacaville, also reported nothing out of the ordinary. Roughly 85 life-science companies have offices in the Sacramento region, though most of them focus on agriculture products or medical software and hardware components, not biopharmaceuticals. But the region's industry is familiar with vandalism. In the late 1990s, vandals destroyed test plots of genetically engineered crops in Yolo County to protest the development of technology some see as dangerous to organic farmers and the food supply. Van Sluyters said Thursday's incident would continue to ripple through biomedicine, especially if it scares students away from careers in the industry. "If (animal-rights activists) can cut off the pipeline of people who are interested in careers in that field because they are afraid, that is a pretty terrible thing," he said.