The latest newsletter from the National Anti Vivisection Society (NAVS) features an amazing claim in the section on ‘research without animals’. A team at Aston University has supposedly created “a human based nerve cell system which reflects the complexity of the human brain”. Wow. That’s something.

Would it be mischievous to wonder what this nerve system thinks about being cooped up in a glass bottle? If it really reflects the complexity of the human brain, it may be emotionally traumatised at being locked up all night when it could be watching Big Brother!

Seriously, of course RDS supports all types of research, including cell and tissue cultures. These can enable some problems to be studied without the use of animals. The development of alternatives is an integral part of scientific research.  But the motivation of antivivisection groups for highlighting these other methods is nothing other than to undermine the use of animals. Making exaggerated claims may help their fundraising, but does little to contribute to good science.

The researcher involved makes the more moderate, genuine and sensible point in an article on the NAVS website that:

If a novel human tissue neurotoxicity test were able to model successfully even a narrow aspect of human neural damage sufficiently well to gain worldwide regulatory acceptance, several thousand animal neurotoxicity experiments would become obsolete.

Absolutely. But NAVS are predictably dismissive of those dismal scientists who still “think cell systems cannot fully replicate the human brain”. Thank you NAVS, for this piece of expert opinion.

Well, looks like none of the five SPEAK protestors arrested at Saturday’s demo were even from Oxford!

The five arrested for breaches of public order were released on bail until Thursday, January 26. They are barred from entering Oxford. Two are from Essex and others from Northampton, London and Kent.
The Oxford Mail, 16th January 2006

This suggests several things, including:

1. SPEAK is having trouble finding support amongst locals and is having to bus supporters in an attempt to increase numbers.

2. Since those arrested were presumably making trouble, SPEAK is deliberately bussing in people who escalate protest beyond what is expected of peaceful demonstrators.

The latter is very possible when you consider that some of the protestors felt the need to cover their faces (why would any law-abiding citizen feel the need to do so if they are merely exercising their democratic voice in a legal manner?), and when you consider the threatening words at the protest from Mel Broughton, spokesman for SPEAK;

Now it is time to fight. We must take this chance, we must do what is necessary… The time has come for fighting, not talking… You have got every opportunity to enter this city any time of day or night and they won’t stop you. They are going to have to worry about what will happen next.
The Oxford Mail, 16th January 2006

The final comment ‘they are going to have to worry about what will happen next’ perturbs me, following as it does a literal call-to-arms.  This doesn’t sit well with the idea of a peaceful organisation, which SPEAK claims to be.

This weekend saw yet another weekend of protests from our friends at SPEAK. Not just two demonstrations on Saturday and Sunday, but a rally in the town hall. A handful of protesters were still planted on the pavement outside the new animal laboratory on Monday even (to the great enjoyment of all those working around the area; see my earlier comment about megaphones)

Having seen the demonstration and its so-called violent abuse by the police, I am beginning to wonder if it was actually the same demonstration I had been at.

Yes, there was a little cafuffle at the front, when a few of the more militant activists tried to break through the lines of policemen and women protecting the science area. These were dealt with in what seemed a very civil restrained manner. To me it seems pretty obvious that if you are going to attack a line of policemen, they are not going to step aside and give you a pat on the back.

As for the suggested intimidation by the coppers, that again seems only the demonstrators’ own fault: if you are going to threaten to attack any building that is part of the university and you fail to provide your own stewards to the demonstration, it seems only logical to me that a close-guarding heavy police presence is required. The police seemed very civilised to me. In fact, having seen them in action during potentially violent football matches, to my eyes there was no sign of intimidation at all. The front rows of officers did not even have helmets and shields! And if, like the SPEAK website so happily claims, the fight is not with Thames Valley Police, but with the University itself, why are demonstrators hurling objects at the police?

This whole weekend of demonstrations proved once again to me that the activists involved in this protests are just bleating: everybody is out to get them, no one is cooperating, the university and all its workers are evil, etc. etc. If they could keep their violent component and conspiracy theories under control, none of this would be necessary and peaceful protest could take place, perhaps even dialogue. As it stands we just have to live with the continual threat of violence and they will have to live with the police being on their case. 

SPEAK had a demo at Oxford on Saturday (14th Jan) at which they claimed there was an ‘unprovoked police attack’.  According to SPEAK, their protesters showed ‘discipline and self-restraint’ –

despite provocation on many occasions by Thames Valley Police officers, who were clearly looking for a confrontation.
SPEAK

Strangely, independent articles in The Guardian, The Oxford Mail and The Oxford Student (the latter two being well placed to comment knowledgeably on local happenings) didn’t have quite the same slant on SPEAK’s behaviour:

... the builders roll an empty wheelbarrow directly in front of the protesters, who hurl abuse at them with the aid of a megaphone.
The Guardian, 14th January 2006

Violent clashes at an animal rights demonstration in Oxford saw protesters break through metal barricades and hurl missiles at riot police…
The Oxford Mail, 16th January 2006

The demonstration did not pass without incident. Individuals hurled abuse at police, accusing them of traumatizing police horses.
The Oxford Student, 17th January 2006

The police officer who oversaw the demonstration also noted that a lawful protest (as had been discussed with the organisers) should not involve participants wearing masks to conceal their identity and the removal of barriers put there to ensure public safety.

Nor should they include unsettling words such as those heard from SPEAK’s main man:

Former frontman of the 80s band The Smiths, (Saint) Morrissey is a well-known animal rights sympathiser. He spent much of the 90s exiled in the USA, where for some reason it’s a minor celebrity cause: he was winner of last year’s PetA Linda McCartney Memorial Award, no less.  Now, a fan’s question to the online Morrissey fanzine True To You asks him for his “message to the world to make life better for animals on our planet.” Unfortunately, the best that Morrissey could come up with was:

"I support the efforts of the Animal Rights Militia in England and I understand why fur-farmers and so-called laboratory scientists are repaid with violence - it is because they deal in violence themselves and it’s the only language they understand - the same principals that apply to war. You reach a point where you cannot reason with people. This is why the Animal Rights Militia and the Hunt Saboteurs exist. They are usually very intelligent people who are forced to act because the law is shameful or amoral."

After some barbed comments about carnivorous celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Clarissa Dickson Wright, and an attack on hunting, he concludes “Everybody needs to hate something, it seems.”
In a Sunday Times article, Clarissa Dickson Wright responded “He’s probably cracked from a lack of animal protein,” while a spokesperson for HLS said “People can have whatever opinions they want, but to condone and encourage acts of violence is entirely wrong and should not be allowed in a democracy.”

Taiwanese researchers have announced the world’s first 100% glow-in-the-dark pigs.

Green fluorescent protein, GFP to its friends and intimates, has been used to make transgenic animals for sometime – glowing mice have been with us since 1999.  Indeed, fluorescent beasties of the porcine persuasion aren’t a first, but what’s unique about these three little pigs is that they glow green from the inside out – even their internal organs glimmer.  Previous piggies have been patchy in their luminescence.

So, I hear you cry, what can fluorescing cloven-hoofed animals do for humans?  Well quite a lot as it so happens; they can be used to study animal models of human diseases.  Injecting stem cells from one animal into another and then examining where those cells end up, how they affect the receiver’s physiology, and if they address the receiver’s symptoms is fairly common research.  The fact that these cells glow under UV light means that the cells’ migration can be tracked without biopsies, or euthanizing the animal to obtain sections of tissue for examination with traditional methods such as histochemistry.

This is also a benefit for the pigs and other animals involved – non-invasive tracking of the cells means that the animals are poked, prodded and operated on less, leaving them to enjoy their lives in greater peace and tranquility.

Invasive techniques aren’t even required to get more disco pigs: the researchers hope that the old fashioned (but tried and tested) method of baby-making will result in the next generation… although shy pigs bemoan the lack of ‘light on/lights off’ choice.

The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection has paid tribute to Tony Banks, highlighting an article he wrote a year before his death. It is certainly sad to see someone with so much personality pass away. But his view of animal research was deeply misguided.

In claiming that animal research “appears to be torture”, Mr Banks lost touch with reality. Even the virulent National Anti Vivisection Society (NAVS) gave a more reasonable version to the House of Lords Select Committee. The NAVS said about “torturing the animals” that they “have not encountered that sort of thing”.

Mr Banks also claims that Ray Greek, medical director of the now discredited animal rights organisation Europeans for Medical Progress, “is one of our most respected scientists”. In fact Greek is a non-practising American anaesthesiologist. He claims to be “widely published”, but is not - at least not in respectable journals.

BUAV describe Mr Bank’s views as ‘trenchant’. We think ‘entrenched’ might have been a better description. Like other antivivisectionists, Tony Banks would have done well to check his facts from time to time. 

The leading science journal Nature may be starting to realise that it needs to keep a closer eye (forgive the pun when you read the links) on how it reports on animal experimentation. Two letters in the 12th January edition take its reporting to task. The first criticises an article by one of its feature writers as ‘unduly dismissive of experiments on living animals’, and a second ‘is disappointed at the negative tone of your recent News stories “UK animal labs still under siege”...’. This letter continues:

[There] are strong indications that the animal-rights extremist campaign has reached its high-water mark and that the tide is now turning against it. The victory against extremism is there for the taking, but the scientific community must learn to reach up and grab it. That means refusing to be intimidated, standing up for our science and, perhaps most important, staying positive.

The Government, along with most of the scientific community, believe that stem cell research offers enormous potential to deliver new treatments for currently incurable illnesses, like chronic heart disease, diabetes and Parkinson’s.

Anti-vivisection groups like to suggest that the use of stem cells is an alternative to the use of animals in research. For example, Europeans for Medical Progress states that “human stem cells have already successfully treated children with leukaemia”. But this is a treatment, not a research method.

The new report of the ’Stem Cell Initiative’ makes clear the important contribution of animal research to the emerging science of stem cell research. It highlights, for example, how the landmark discovery that new neurons are generated in the adult brain by specific groups of stem cells was initially made in mice. After this, it was rapidly confirmed in primates and humans. The report also confirms that it will be vital to test any new cell therapy preparations in animals for the absence of contaminating embryonic stem cells in order to ensure that they cannot cause teratomas in patients.

Stem cell research is yet another area of science where the use of animals is vital, as has already been described on our main website. 

Reading previous posts on this blog you would think the good folks at PeTA are running out of feet in which to shoot themselves:

First they’re artfully demolished by comedians (see PeTA = hypocritical bull***t, say Penn & Teller), second they get done for snuffing disingenuously ‘rescued’ cats and dogs (see Latest on PeTA killings and PeTA - animal killers), and finally their good buddy Jerry Vlasak – former spokesperson for PeTA-funded Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) – told the United States Senate he believes that assassinating scientific researchers is ‘morally justifiable’ (see this 27 October 2005 San Francisco Chronicle article for news on the Senate hearing and this 1 August 2004 Observer article for background on the PeTA/PCRM connection).  PeTA may protest they’ve ‘distanced’ themselves from Vlasak, but evidently not far enough to remove his endorsements from their web sites – visit the PeTA India site for an example.

So.  Only one foot left – and that’s if you’re a cat or dog.

But just in case you are a cat or a dog, let’s not forget that PeTA has more ways to show you their love than the ol’ hypodermic hello.  As the former dean of the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health pointed out in a recent article, PeTA’s opposition to any and all animal research harms animals as well as humans.  Animals – including pets, upon whose owners PeTA depends for its multimillion-dollar yearly donations – live longer and longer because they don’t die of distemper, rabies, or scads of other diseases that wouldn’t have been eradicated without animal research.  If PeTA had their way, however, these animal-life-saving discoveries would never have been made, and research that may offer further medical benefits to animals would stop today.

The tiny minority of people in this country who are campaigning to abolish all animal research are highly vociferous and vitriolic. This can sometimes create an impression of hostility to animal research which is the opposite of reality.  We often find we have support in unexpected places, as this article in New Statesman nicely illustrates.

For those of you following the PeTA-kills-animals-instead-of-’liberating’-them saga (see previous blogs, PeTA - animal killers and PeTA = hypocritical bull***t, say Penn & Teller), some interesting points are made on CNN’s programme Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees.

You can read the transcript or watch the video.

Ah, the hyposcrisy continues… SPEAK has another pop at Oxford, despite intimidation being one the extremist group’s own tactics.

It has become clear that some of the arrogant and self interested members of this institution now believe that they can use intimidation as a weapon to stifle free speech…

SPEAK

The animal rights publication Animal People celebrated the end of 2005 with it’s annual analysis of key US animal rights/animal welfare groups’ funding. The biggest antivivisection group in the world by a good margin is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, with a budget of $25,063,060 in financial year 2004. This is over 50 times the budget of RDS and our US colleagues Americans for Medical Progress, to whom we are grateful for passing on this information. PeTA is also apparently the sole beneficiary a group called Foundation to Support Animal Protection/FSAP, whose budget was $3,294,816 in 2004.

So what does PeTA do with all this money, apart from killing animals (see Tigger’s blog entry last month PeTA - animal killers)? JunkScience.com has included one of PeTA’s campaigns as a top junk science claim of 2005.  PeTa’s ‘educational arm’ TeachKind, it says, reaches kindergarten children with its extremist agenda: “PeTA’s ‘learning materials’ claim that such innocuous behavior as drinking milk is an example of ‘animal cruelty,’ which their Web site repeatedly claims is an unmistakable predictor of future adult psychopathy.”

Read the full JunkScience.com entry here:

Three cheers for the animal rights group Europeans for Medical Progress (EMP) for giving us something to chuckle about as we head off for Christmas. This group, which masquerades as a scientific organisation, claims that the Advertising Standards Authority “actually upheld three complaints” against them, rather than five as we all thought. EMP claim that the ruling on complaints 3, 4 and 5 were the same, and thus treated as one complaint, and that this is “evident from the adjudication itself”.

OK. Lets take a look. The ASA ruling states that rulings “1”, “2”, “3., 4. & 5” were all upheld. We checked with the ASA and they consider those to be 5 complaints upheld. Presumably this is another example of the “careful research” and “rigorous evaluation” that EMP claim to carry out. Maybe it should be five cheers for EMP rather than three!