Perhaps we were pushing our luck, but we just couldn’t resist. Shortly after she came back to head up the moribund British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, the new chief executive Michelle Thew set up an e-mail address called ‘askmichelle@buav.org’. The idea was for supporters to get direct access to her to ask questions and offers suggestions.

A little while later, the same Michelle wrote in a letter to The Guardian that ‘the bodies that represent researchers insist on highlighting the activities of one or two isolated extremists, rather than engaging in a true debate’. So we used the askmichelle address to request any evidence that RDS has ever sought to avoid engaging in debate on this issue. To our knowledge, we have never turned down the opportunity to engage in genuine debate.

Perhaps not surprisingly, exactly three months later we have had no response whatsoever. The antivivisectionists are at their best when throwing out grandiose rhetorical challenges. But when it comes to producing evidence, all we get is a deafening silence.

Okay - this is an exaggeration. The item is posted on the notorious ‘Biteback’ website, where the animal rights extremists post details of the various unpleasant actions they have taken against those they accuse of abusing animals. In fact that the claim is merely that they ‘rescued approximately 100 tadpoles from a fast drying pool’.

But there is a serious point here. Of the 266 incidents posted since the beginning of this year, only 44 are claimed for actions in the UK. And these have tailed off remarkably in recent months - there were only 12 in the past three months, including saving the traumatised tadpoles.

As reported last weekend in the Guardian, we have seen a sudden decline in the targeting of individual researchers around the country. At the same time, there is a steady rise in the number of institutions and individuals prepared to explain to the public why we need to use animals in research. It is vital that we keep this up. There has never been a safer time to speak out.

Earlier this month, the EU adopted new guidelines for the housing and care of laboratory animals. For benefit of policy wonks, these are known as Appendix A to the Council of Europe Convention on animal experimentation ETS123. 

The revisions were politically driven, but what do they mean for medical research? Probably not much in the UK. But you wouldn’t know it from the antivivisection spin. 

Standing outside the mostly completed Oxford research building on Thursdays are a group of protesters (this being Oxford we should say they are against the use of animals!).

Despite the assertions of animal activists that the Serious and Organised Crime Act would ‘muzzle legitimate process’ this has clearly not happened -protests continued.  But it was fallacy that this new law would stifle protest for another reason; there were many more serious crimes being performed by extremists and the recent arrests were for offences such as blackmail. The Speak protesters do look somewhat forlorn; rather like a group of old communists in Red Square protesting for the ‘good old days’

Norman Baker is one of the most persistent and ardent antivivisectionists within the ranks of MPs. He has also established a reputation as a canny politician who can manoeuvre an argument to his advantage.

In the May edition of the House Magazine—which is intended for politicians in the House of Commons—Mr Baker calls for ‘a sensible scientific and ethical debate’ about animal experiments. He accepts that a handful of extremists have waged campaigns of intimidation and even violence against those involved in animal research. In his article, titled ‘Man’s worst friend’, he states that this violent minority has ‘set the cause of animal rights back by years’.

This is a far more sensible line than the mainstream antivivisection groups are taking. The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), for example, continues to claim that animal rights extremism is vastly and deliberately exaggerated, as if through some giant conspiracy. A daft approach.

But whilst Mr Baker sounds moderate and reasonable, his arguments are no less disingenuous. He claims that the use of animals in basic biological research is excluded from the European Directive 86/609, which, as he points out, gave birth to our 1986 Act. He wants all the EU countries to have effective systems of licensing, control and inspection. He claims the huge ethical issues of genetically modified animals have simply not been addressed. And he wants far more effort to be put into developing alternatives.

In fairness, many of these criticisms could apply to many other countries in the world. But Mr Baker is doing the debate in the UK a gross disservice by omitting vital facts.  He does not acknowledge the extensive regulation in the UK, which clearly covers basic biological research and includes extensive licensing, control and inspection. And there is no mention of the lengthy scrutiny and debate of the ethics of animal research, for example from the House of Lords Committee on Animals in Scientific Procedures, or the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.

However moderate and reasonable he tries to sound, Norman Baker is simply another old-fashioned antivivisectionist. His objective to abolish animal research would set back medical progress for all mankind. It’s a good thing he has little influence.

A series of articles in the Times Higher Educational Supplement has highlighted once again the debate about animal experiments at universities, and perceptions of secrecy surrounding the issue.

Last week, Michelle Thew, Director of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) accused universities of ‘stonewalling as part of a cynical attempt by some researchers to control the public debate about animal experiments’. She claimed that the problem of animal rights extremism has been grossly exaggerated by the media, and that safeguards are in place to protect the identity of researchers.

This is deeply disingenuous. The modern tactics of the animal rights extremists are to target institutions like universities based on the type of research going on there. It is well known that many of the extremists are completely obsessed with primate research. Individuals only become at risk after the extremists have decided on their next target. Michelle Thew, who recently claimed that there are only ‘one or two’ extremists, is completely out of touch. It is easy for her to criticise when it is not her getting bricks through windows at night.

A far more sensible approach was outlined in this week’s Times Higher, that universities should take cautious but proactive steps to be more open about animal research. It is, after all, an essential part of medical research to improve the health of the nation.

The government has made enormous progress in the past two years in tackling animal rights extremism. There are tough new laws to crack down on harassment and criminal damage, and a hugely improved police operation has succeeded in bringing many extremists to justice. As a result, it is time to take a fresh look at the benefits of communicating the important role of animal research. And many universities are already doing so.

RDS applauds those researchers and universities who have decided that the time has come to counter the misinformation and propaganda from the animal rights movement. We will give all the help we can to this vital endeavour.

The Sainsbury’s Eco bag created controversy; were its green credentials marred by unethical sourcing?

This is not the only example. The Co-op plastic carrier bags carry this text:

We don’t test our toiletries or household products on animals
Independently reviewed by BVAV www.buav.org
FOOD SAFETY Refrigerate all chilled foods…
SAFETY FIRST To avoid danger to children....

The Co-op does have a clear policy on such use of animals, and this is a worthy aspiration. However just as with Sainsbury’s bag it seems to me there is at best muddle, or at worst a touch of hyposcrisy. The Co-op sells medicines tested on animals, but in fairness it does not make a not tested on animals claim here. But for food safety, and safety at home, animal testing has and does protect the environment, protect our food, and protect our children.

EMP is peddling yet more erroneous pseudoscience(1), and Tony Benn is fronting their latest drivel.

Benn is a long-time advocate of animal rights and abolishing animal research, but he has more reason than your average joe to be grateful for research involving animals – he had a pacemaker fitted in 2005.

Pacemakers have depended quite heavily on animal research. In the 1950s animal studies demonstrated the restoration of heart rate, cardiac output and mean aortic pressures with complete heart block through the use of a myocardial electrode. The first pacemakers (1950) were crude, painful and powered from an AC wall socket; a potential hazard of electrocution of the patient by inducing ventricular fibrillation. However, by 1957 control of post-surgical heart block was a significant contribution to decreasing mortality of open heart surgery. Further animal research led to the development of implantable pacemakers (1960), leading to Mr Benn’s life-saving treatment.

Now in this democratic society I respect Mr Benn’s right to disagree with animal research, but I certainly don’t respect hypocrisy.

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(1) a film about medicines – I’ve been told it’s deathly dull as well as riddled with pseudoscientific inaccuracies, but have been put off so thoroughly by the press release (where they say "Watch this film for an insight into just how far scientific methods have come since thalidomide" – a strange comment since one of the main ways scientific methods progressed was increasing the rigour of animal testing and legislative requirements that would have averted the thalidomide tragedy) that I just haven’t been able to bring myself to sit through it yet… I’ll report back next week on what I think.

Tomorrow the antivivisectionists are gathering in Strasbourg to issue yet another declaration on the use of monkeys in research.

Of course it’s UK activists (it was ever thus) in the form of NAVS and its ‘youth’ wing Animal Defenders International who are leading the charge. Their European Parliament Declaration 40/2007 calls for ‘a ban on the use of Great Apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans) and wild-caught primates, together with a commitment for a phase-out of all primate use within the EU.’

This demand is quite moderate – deliberately and stealthily so. 

Last year the animal rights campaign group SPEAK was becoming increasingly frustrated that the debate was not going its way. Typical of postings on its websites from those times was the article pleading IS ANYONE OUT THERE LISTENING?

Well it seems that SPEAK now has some unlikely listeners. On its ‘Site Demo Report’ website posting of 12 April, SPEAK claims that ’the builders of the Oxford torture centre were clearly seen to be stopping their work and listening to SPEAK supporters talking on the megaphone on today’s demo. They listened as the true horrors of what happens inside laboratories was described‘.

So there we have it. After years of campaigning, SPEAK have finally found someone to listen to them. That is progress. We hope they are happy.

A leaflet appeared recently from the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) suggesting that the use of animals for toxicity testing is an ‘outdated’ science. This is actually a frequent claim by animal rights groups.

But is it a good argument? Have the antivivisectionists bothered to put any thought into this line of debate, or does it just trip off the tongue like so much else of what they say? After all, we still use wheels after thousands of years. So they can’t surely be suggesting that just because something has been in use for a long time it is automatically obsolete.

The only attempt at justification that BUAV makes is that we don’t still use some technologies from the past. The examples it gives are a typewriter, a large mobile phone, and a single-winged propeller plane. These are not great examples, since we still use aeroplanes, keyboards and small mobile phones. 

I commented before on the failure of BUAV to get its sums right, here and here.

Under its new leader, things at BUAV seem to have got even worse: I spotted the following howler in the weekend newspapers:

‘200 million animals are used in research and testing worldwide for consumer goods every year,’ according to Michelle Thew of BUAV.

Now, I assume that by consumer goods Ms Thew means non-medical products – this is the theme of the article. In the UK, safety testing of such products accounts for just 4% of all animal procedures, or 120,000 a year (most animals are used in biomedical research, not safety testing). Worldwide estimates for all animal procedures aren’t too reliable, but we have calculated that they are unlikely to add up to more than 50 million a year. Assuming that, like in the UK, 4% of these are for the safety testing of non-medical products ... we get a total of 2 million worldwide.

If they really want to ‘engage in true debate’, BUAV should start by getting its facts straight. But on past performance I doubt we will see it correcting this error any time soon.

Quite a number of MPs have now signed the first balanced parliamentary motion (EDM) on animal research to go down for many years. This EDM urges all involved to seek reasoned dialogue on this issue.

Perhaps in the spirit of such dialogue, the campaigning organisation known as Naturewatch has just released a review of progress over the last 10 years of animal experimentation called ‘Who will listen’. Whilst the review itself is somewhat disjointed, it is nonetheless an interesting contribution to the debate.

The misuse of science by campaign groups to promote their cause is all around us. But it has not gone unnoticed. Debates about the weight of evidence for or against scientific topics such as climate change, homeopathy or the safety of vaccinations are widespread. See for example the excellent column and blog by Guardian writer Ben Goldacre on ‘bad science’. This week, Goldacre points out that ‘as long as you cherry pick the data and keep one eye half closed, you can prove anything with science’.

But what happens when the objectives of groups campaigning on different themes are in conflict. This is the messy situation highlighted in a recent Political Update from the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV). The Update complains about a Greenpeace commissioned study which has concluded that a strain of genetically modified (GM) maize, approved for sale by the European commission, has shown signs of toxicity in laboratory rats. Greenpeace is claiming that such GM food poses significant health risks, but the BUAV responds that this study demonstrates little more than the supposed limitations of animal tests.

Both parties are guilty of distorting science by simply interpreting evidence as they wish to see it.

Rigour (honesty and integrity), Respect (for life, the law and the public good) and Responsibility (in communication, listening and informing) are the new three Rs – an ethical code for scientists. For biomedical scientists, we now have six Rs – we are already guided by Reduction, Refinement and Replacement of animals in research.

Sir David King is chief science adviser to the government; his office developed the code and wants to see it widely adopted. He describes the new three Rs as ‘a simple summary of the values that each of us espouses as practising scientists; it should also demonstrate to the public that scientists take ethical issues seriously.’ Yes, nice idea, but what is it really for? It looks like a sticking plaster solution which says ‘I’m a scientist, I’m a really good person, trust me’.

As Sir David himself indicates, the vast majority of scientists already adhere to such principles without the need for a formal code of ethics. So the real driver of this initiative seems to be a perception of ‘the public’ as anti-science. If this is true, it will take more than a government-inspired code of ethics to engender greater support for science and scientists.

Maybe the code is not intended to promote public interest and debate. Sir David said in Guardian Education yesterday that it should simply be ‘embedded in schools and universities as soon as possible.’ He concludes ‘The public has great aspirations for scientists. We have a responsibility to them [the public or the scientists?], and we must not let them down. I therefore urge all scientists to adopt and help promote the code.’

If only the code could be embedded in antivivisection groups - rigour, respect and responsibility seem to be foreign concepts to them.