Faced with the threat of attacks from animal rights activists, the University of Iowa is taking its animal research lab underground.

The university's board of regents has approved an $11.1 million budget to create a 35,000-square-foot vivarium that will be dug out under a grassy courtyard. The new lab will connect the university's Medical Education Research Facility and the Carver Biomedical Research Building, providing greater security with no need to transport research animals above ground. The board noted that other research centers, including the University of Southern California, have also built underground labs to protect researchers and their work from attack.   

It's not a vague threat. Five years ago the Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for organizing a break-in by masked intruders at the University of Iowa in which computers were trashed and hundreds of research animals were stolen. And in southern California researchers' homes and vehicles have been subject to attacks as well. Even more aggressive strategies are used by animal rights groups in the UK, which have organized campaigns to intimidate researchers who undertake experiments with animals.

- read the report from the Des Moines Register

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