You probably haven’t noticed the increasingly frantic headlines appearing on the SPEAK website in recent weeks. After all, apart from animal rights fanatics and the odd journalist, we doubt anyone bothers to look at their website. Their recent posts have included the following headlines:

Voice of the voiceless
Not in My Name
IS ANYONE OUT THERE LISTENING?
Distinguishing the Truth from the Lies

It’s a bit pitiful really. Maybe they are frustrated by the noise injunction which means they cannot simply drown out the voices of anyone who disagrees with them. Or maybe they are only just beginning to realise that nobody thinks SPEAK has anything worth saying on this debate.

One-day they might start to face the facts. The only reason anyone takes any notice of SPEAK is because of the unpleasant disruption which they cause, and because it is the closest the media can get to any comment on the activities of the Animal Liberation Front in Oxford. Since so many of the SPEAK ringleaders have criminal convictions relating to animal rights extremism, they have only themselves to blame for their predicament.

Antivivisection groups are lobbying hard to get MPs to sign a parliamentary motion (EDM 92) calling for (yet another) independent inquiry into an animal research. But do they have any idea what they actually want?

We wrote to Europeans for Medical Progress, who are mentioned in this EDM, back in August 2005 to ask what the terms of reference for such an inquiry would be. The reply came back that “the format and terms of reference of the evaluation have yet to be finalised”. Since then, they have stopped responding to emails. Presumably they are still a little upset at our successful complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority exposing their inaccurate information.

So we wrote instead (three times) to Mike Hancock MP who tabled the EDM. For his first two replies he simply ignored our question. So we had to put it a little more bluntly, suggesting that he must surely have some idea of which issues he thought were not covered by all the independent inquiries we have had already.

But it seems Mike Hancock has no idea what he is asking for in this EDM either. His answer was for us to go back and talk to the scientists ‘on the other side’, presumably referring us back to Europeans for Medical Progress (or should it be ‘lack of progress’).

Of course those of us in the scientific community all understand the importance of the critical scientific evaluation of the results of all research studies - including those using animals. RDS recently posted an article on our website describing one possible approach (the full article is in a linked pdf).

The antivivisectionists are well aware of the multiple inquiries we have had already. They have no new arguments to examine. The sole purpose of this EDM is to waste time and attempt to undermine animal research.

The extremists seemed to be active all around the country earlier this week: in Caversham (near Reading) police found an incendiary device in the driveway of a women who runs a small courier service for the pharmaceutical industry. According to the BBC, a 39-year old man was arrested in the vicinity after discarding another crude incendiary in a nearby garden, and four others are also in custody. Responsibility for the attempted firebombing was later claimed by the ALF.

Animal rights extremists are behind vandalism at a greyhound track in Scotland at the weekend which caused more than £10,000 worth of damage. Vehicles were smashed, tyres slashed, every electrical cable was cut and the stadium was covered in graffiti.

An attempted liberation took place in Auchtermuchty in Scotland, on a free-range, non-intensive deer farm. The zealots wrote “This is a wildlife prison” on the roadways and destroyed the fencing. This attack would be amusing if it wasn’t for the costs to replace the fencing, which are considerable. Apparently (see, for instance, Oxford Gossip), none of the “imprisoned” deer even tried to escape. The animals stayed contentedly where they were. With all that free food and space to roam, more a wildlife paradise than a “prison”, it seems.

Unless you’ve been lost in the Outback for the last year or so, you’ll know that there’s a heated debate centred on the fair city of Oxford.  This has spawned many discussion threads on an internet chat forum, www.oxfordgossip.co.uk, about the new Oxford University biomedical research centre and animal research in general.

Now your gut reaction might be that RDS is closely monitoring this and posting every 5 minutes – but happily for us (because we’re busy enough with successful complaints to the ASA about PETA and Europeans for Medical Progress; providing good info on our website; etc etc; thank you very much) Oxford is filled with intelligent and informed people who, as you’d expect, are more than capable of carrying the debate.

One in particular has caught my eye and I’d like to take my hat off to JC who has posted sensibly and constructively, often in the face of crass stupidity and wilful ignorance, without losing his/her cool.

In one discussion thread s/he highlights a few points about someone close to our hearts, Jarrod Bailey the ‘scientific director’ of Europeans for Medical Progress.  Well, credit to Bailey for being one of the very few scientists (or is he the only?) to speak for the animal rights movement who is actually published, more than Ray Greek has ever managed… BUT before Bailey twists his arm patting himself on the back he should consider two points: (i) the merits of two recent papers are in doubt and may be withdrawn (see GeorginaTheGiraffe’s recent blog entry) – oh dear; and (ii) unfortunately for Bailey, the papers he has managed to publish display the fact that he’s a hypocrite for all to see…

Maybe Professor Jonathan Wolff read our blog Horses for Courses, in which we were critical of his oversimplification of the numbers of animals used in different areas of research. His article in today’s Education Guardian Killing softly is much fairer.

As an academic philosopher who visited animal labs while a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics working party (see their in-depth report The Ethics of Research Involving Animals), he is comfortable with conditions for lab animals:

“I was taken to university and pharmaceutical labs, as well as a contract research facility. All the animals I saw were kept in far better conditions than those in the smelly pet shop where I had recently purchased a hamster. It was a world away from the battery chicken farm I worked on as a teenager. I was surprised by how orderly everything looked. I saw much less pain and suffering than I was expecting.”

He continues:

At a recent parliamentary debate, Jarrod Bailey, of the animal rights organisation ‘Europeans for Medical Progress’ did his best to convince the audience that animal research is bad science - as he would.

Bailey claimed that his opinions are based on hard scientific evidence, and he cited a couple of articles from the journal Biogenic Amines to back himself up. What he didn’t mention was that he was co-author of both studies. In other words, he agrees with himself. No surprises there! Strangely, one of his co-authors promotes vegan pet food, rather than having any expertise in bio-medical research.

What Bailey kept even quieter about was the way these two articles had got into a journal in the first place. It turns out that a well known antivivisectionist called Claude Reiss had managed to get on the editorial board of Biogenic Amines. Reiss has connections to the animal rights organisation Animal Aid and is a science consultant to - you guessed - Europeans for Medical Progress.

The journal has been unable to confirm that these papers were peer-reviewed (a process where scientists with expertise in the field examine the paper). The journal editor, Parvez, later wrote that the journal “in the past, have insertion of an antivivisectionist, Claude Reiss, in the editorial board who did some of the editing,”. Parvez said “after his two-years stay in the editorial board, he did lots of harm to the journal and we all forced him to resign”. So at least that rather feeble attempt to gain credibility by the antivivisectionists has been put to rest. 

Apart from an excellent article in the Guardian and a few other papers, there was only minimal media coverage of today’s announcement from the Advertising Standards Authority to uphold five complaints against the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA). This may come as a disappointment to some of us. It is, after all, nice to see the systematic misinformation from antivivisection groups publicly exposed.

But maybe it is a sign of the times. The medical benefits of animal research are becoming well-known. And the scientific and medical consensus on its value is overwhelming. The mainstream media don’t need much more convincing. From that point of view, demonstrating that antivivisection groups use false information and wrong arguments just isn’t that newsworthy any more. We have actually made a lot of progress in recent years!

Perhaps predictably, the antivivisection groups have been quick to exploit the human tragedy of the clinical trials disaster to pursue their own campaigning agenda.

Bringing a new medicine to the market is a complex process which involves many stages of testing. It typically takes between 10 and 12 years. Finding out what went wrong in this clinical trial might also require detailed investigation. We simply don’t know all the facts at this stage.

But the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) cannot be accused of taking their time to rush out their ill-informed condemnation of animal testing. They state correctly that the drug that caused multiple organ failure in the human volunteers had been approved for trial after being tested on animals. But a small error of omission here amounts to a huge act of dishonesty. There was no mention from the BUAV that this drug had also been tested with many of the alternatives which the anti-vivisectionists are consistently calling for - such as cell-culture and computer analysis.

Nobody has ever suggested that any of these ‘pre-clinical’ tests can give a 100% guarantee of safety for human subjects. There is always some inherent risk in clinical trials, just as virtually all medicines have some side-effects. But to suggest that we abandon certain types of test because they are not perfect is like saying that we should stop wearing seatbelts because they do not prevent all injuries.

There are around 300 of these early stage clinical trials every year. Yet the kind of problems that we have seen at Northwick Park Hospital are exceptionally rare. The record of pre-clinical tests, including animal tests, in protecting humans has been excellent. We should not let animal rights propaganda get in the way of a proper investigation into this unusual exception.

The fact that six young men are seriously or critically ill after volunteering for a Phase I drug trial is a tragedy. It is an extremely rare occurrence, almost without precedent in hundreds of such trials that take place every year. It is important to wait for the results of the enquiry before jumping to any conclusions about what went wrong this time. I hope the enquiry will be both quick and thorough.

Many journalists have outlined the drug testing process, including the animal tests which should ensure that those first volunteers are not exposed to serious risk.

"Something is identified that looks promising. Work in the lab confirms that it has an effect on, say, tissue samples or a virus. The scientists get excited. Once they have done all they can to establish what the product does and how, and whether it is helpful or harmful, the animal tests begin. The point of the animal tests - generally on rats or mice - is to prevent what happened at Northwick Park. If the mice die or exhibit disturbed behaviour, it’s time to think again. As of 2004, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority, which licenses drugs in the UK, has to see the results before it will allow any human trials to begin.”
From test tube to medicine cabinet, The Guardian, 16 March 2006

Mike Hanlon’s article - Yes, there are risks but these tests are VITAL - also makes a lot of sense:

"If animal testing was banned either drug companies would not risk producing new medicines at all, or human trials would have to begin without the benefit of prior human testing - in which case we are going to see a lot more disasters like the one in North West London.”
Daily Mail, 16 March 2006

One thing is clear: if the animal tests were not done then volunteers in phase I trials would face serious or deadly side effects on a daily basis.

Two articles in the last few days got me thinking about how we can’t regard the media as one homogeneous entity. And that one person’s fact is another person’s oversimplification.

First, New Scientist has a comment article by philosopher Jonathan Wolff and ethicist Kenneth Boyd that warns against polarisation of the debate about animal research. I have a certain sympathy with this view: the daily news media tend to characterise all antivivisection and animal rights activists as extremists, and on the other hand encourage scientists to hype the benefits of animal research.

As the article puts it “at first glance, the debate on animal research seems to offer only two options: you’re either for it or against it”. It doesn’t have to be quite so black-an-white. At RDS we would never say – without qualification – we are “for” animal research, but we always try to explain why it is necessary. Can we have a debate that recognises all the shades of grey? We can, but the way the national news media work is not often conducive to doing that.

It is a sorry state of affairs when so many of our elected representatives cannot tell the difference between genuine scientific expertise and antivivisection pseudoscientific nonsense.

A prime example of this is Ann Widdecombe MP who has just written for the Oxford newsletter Cherwell. Ms Widdecombe is a fan of the well-known American antivivisectionist Ray Greek, whose books have been exposed as some of the most systematic and disingenuous distortions of animal research ever published. (See for instance this comprehensive review of Greek’s book Sacred Cows and Golden Geese).

Ann Widdecombe has previously described Ray Greek (ridiculously) as a “world expert on animal research”. We have his CV, and he is nothing of the sort. He barely has any publications at all, let alone in the field of animal research. He certainly has no credibility as a research scientist, although he has a loyal following of antivivisectionists.

Ann Widdecombe complains that those who oppose animal research are ‘casually dismissed’. We wonder if she has looked at any of the in-depth and independent inquiries into animal research which have been carried out in recent years. These include The Nuffield Council on Bioethics Report (2005), (The Ethics of Research involving Animals); the Animal Procedures Committee Report (Review of Cost-Benefit Assessment in the use of Animals in Research); and lastly the House of Lords Report, (Animals in Scientific Procedures). All of these took extensive evidence from antivivisection groups – but rejected their ill-informed arguments.

There’s a good independent account of Saturday’s demos on Kieren McCarthy’s Sunday blog entry.

Kieren has commented in an intelligent way on this debate for sometime and makes valid, useful points on both sides.

His unbiased account of the demonstrations tallies with that given by the media.

[About Pro-Test] The level of speech was high. People were intelligent, passionate and coherent… [SPEAK] also expressed [themselves] passionately. But, objectively, it has to be said a high proportion of the Speak protestors were verbally aggressive and abusive where Pro-Test marchers simply weren’t.
… The march also highlighted the other differences. Pro-Test’s march was all about information and positive benefits; Speak’s was all about anger and secrets. I recorded at various points during the day and the tone and words of protestors on both sides were immediately apparent. Anger one side; reason the other. I’ll do a podcast at some point soon.
Kieren McCarthy, Oxford’s day of protests - animal rights and human wrongs
26th Feb 2006

I’ll be interested to hear the podcast – that will be incontrovertible evidence of the respective demeanours of the demos and should quash SPEAK’s claims that

How foolish and/or arrogant do you have to be to join an chat forum where serious discussions about a controversial topic are high on the agenda, and with your first post ever start a new thread in the following high-handed way?

Andre Menache
Newly Matriculated Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 1
Animal experiments = bad science
Please inform yourselves by reading about some of the animal research being conducted at Oxford: http://www.animalaid.org.uk/viv/shame.htm

Poor Andre received quite a drubbing.  These are the first three responses:

i have already read that, just after it was posted on the other thread.
It highlights very few examples of tests, and doesn’t even display those as being valueless. I don’t understand how it is supposed to change my mind?
- stickyfiddle (2nd year) posts: 45

Please inform yourself by getting off your ass and getting a job
Dirty doley
- abuse (Fellow of All Souls) posts: 185

Yep, been there, read that. Contains details of scientific experiments which have contributed to scientific knowledge, described to make them seem as “omg extra cruel” as possible.
Not impressed.
Try again?
- debutante posts: 328

You can see Andre’s post and the subsequent discussion thread on Oxford Gossip, but be warned that it did degenerate a little after that on both sides of the debate for a while.  However, reason was redeemed by a ‘fresher’ (that’s a first year student to those of you outside the UK, but on OxfordGossip denotes someone with a certain number of posts).

Or so one might say to PeTA and PCRM (with apologies to the Clinton campaign) if they’re wondering why allies seem thin on the ground right about now.  From US comrades-in-arms Americans for Medical Progress, Stonefish has learned that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) are having a wee spot of bother getting health organisations to disavow the use of animals in biomedical research.  In a recent ‘action alert,’ PeTA requested that its supporters help the Council on Humane Giving find a ‘cruelty-free diabetes charity.’

Now, for starters, the Council on Humane Giving is a PCRM front.  Anyone familiar with PCRM (through either the likes of Tigger in this blog or other myriad web exposés, such as that at the ActivistCash.com) would be suspicious already.  The Council’s stated aim is to get charities to sign a pledge that they will not fund or conduct animal experiments.  If a charity signs the pledge it gets to display a bunny-fied ‘Humane Charity Seal of Approval.’ As PeTA’s action alert shows, however, the American Diabetes Association and the Diabetes Research & Wellness Foundation both chose not to sign the pledge.  Of course, that could be because PeTA’s recommended method of persuasion is for supporters to ‘demand the [ADA] stop animal research.’ Guess nobody at PeTA/PCRM was ever disciplined as a two-year-old.  Word to the wise: demands don’t work.  Now finish your tempeh burger and you can have some soy ice cream . . . 

What impressed me most about today’s Pro-Test rally in support of the Oxford University research facility was how good-natured it was. There was no doubt that people were passionate about the cause. But there was simply no need for any aggression. No need to shout or hurl abuse. And no deriding people with different points of view. The message was simple and clear - a huge number of people support good science and life-saving medical research. They want to see the research centre built, without fear of intimidation and violence. Good luck to you Pro-Test!