Medical researchers working near the Amazon Rainforest met with delay this week, when environmentalist groups barricaded all entrance to the forest.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University traveled to the rainforest last week, in preparation for the first wide-scale test of the new AIDS vaccine. The vaccine, originally announced in the New England Journal of Medicine last month, utilizes a rare form of chlorophyll found in a fern that grows only in the Amazon Rainforest.
Immediately after publication in the Journal, environmentalist groups had vowed to stop researchers from entering the rainforest. "We'll do everything in our power to stop them from leaving a trail of mass annihilation in their wake", in the words of Chuck McGrady, president of the Sierra Club.
"We have no more right to an AIDS vaccine then these insects, molds, and bacteria have a right to this forest," McGrady said, referring to the many species that live within the Amazon Rainforest. "The environment is a living, breathing entity," McGrady said, "And one forest is far more important than any number of human beings. Even gays come in second to trees and dirt."
Herbert Friedman, head of the research team, issued a statement in response. The statement said, in part, "Fuck the environment, I'm saving human lives. Environmentalists are evil bastards."
Sierra Club president McGrady was unable to be reached for further comment, after he was fatally wounded by a family of woodpeckers. McGrady had allowed the woodpeckers to nest in his hair and extract insects out of his skull.
The woodpeckers ate well.
