My elder brother, Armando Herrera Corral, was this month sent a tube of dynamite by terrorists who oppose his scientific research. The home-made bomb, I was in a shoe-box-sized package labeled as an award for his personal attention, exploded when he pulled II the adhesive tape wrapped around it. My brother, director of the technology park at the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico, was standing III the time, and suffered burns to his legs and a perforated eardrum.
More severely injured by the blast was his colleague Alejandro Aceves López, IV my brother had gone to see in his office to share a cup of coffee and open the award. Aceves López was sitting down when my brother opened the package; he took the brunt of the explosion in his chest, and shrapnel pierced one of his lungs.
Both scientists are now recovering from their injuries, but they were extremely fortunate to survive. The bomb failed to explode properly, and only a fraction of the 20-centimetre-long cylinder of dynamite ignited.
The next day, I, too, was sent a suspicious package. It arrived by an unusual procedure, and on a Sunday. It tested positive for explosives, and was taken away by the bomb squad, which declared a false alarm after finding that the parcel contained only books. My first reaction was to leave the country. Now, I would like to stand up and speak in this way because I believe that terror should not succeed in establishing fear and imposing conduct that takes us far from the freedom we enjoy. I would like the police to take these events seriously; they are becoming a real threat to society.
As an academic scientist, why was my brother singled out in this way? He does not work in a field that is usually considered high-risk for terrorist activity, such as medical research on animals but rather on computer science. Aceves López is an expert in robotics. I am a high-energy physicist and I have been working in the field for 15 years.
From: <http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110822/full/476373a.html> Access Sep7 19th.
Gerardo Herrera Corral is a
physicist at the Research and
Advanced Studies Centre of the
National Polytechnic Institute of
Mexico in Mexico City.
The pronoun ‘it’ (paragraph 4) refers to
