Antivivisection groups continue to churn out pseudoscientific reports at an astonishing rate. One organisation, the National Anti Vivisection Society, must be very confident of its expertise, since it has recently challenged in some depth in a written report a scientific opinion paper produced in 2002 by the European Union’s Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) on the use of non-human primates (NHP) in biomedical research.

But scratch the surface of this report, and it is obvious that it’s just the same old arguments that the antivivisectionists have been using for decades. Sweeping assertions that no animal research can be relevant to humans because of species differences, and broad claims that there are already alternatives for any type of animal research, are the standard fare.

Some time ago we highlighted the nonsense written by the NAVS about ‘quantum pharmacology’ in one of their research papers.

Perhaps an even more bizarre example of the lack of scientific credibility, however, comes from a report exactly 20 years ago entitled ‘Biohazard’. In this document the antivivisectionists claimed that ‘AIDS came out of research on animals’, and was ‘created by people in a laboratory’. The report is still referred to on the NAVS website, where it is described as ‘a two-year investigation into the hazards of the creation of new diseases in animal laboratories, and in particular the story of the simian and human versions of the AIDS viruses’.

NAVS claim that the report ‘shocked MPs and scientists alike’. They are right. Shocked at the sheer absurdity would be a good description. Perhaps not surprisingly, we don’t hear much about that report anymore!