This week’s In the Know magazine (October 10, pages 18-19) has an article about animal research featuring an articulate, intelligent trainee barrister who happens to be diabetic. Lisa says:

Before insulin was discovered, diabetes would be a death sentence. I wouldn’t be here today if scientists hadn’t tested on animals. I know it’s not ideal but it’s the only way forward in many cases. I’d always put the life of a human above an animal.’

I think most people would agree. This presents a dilemma for antivivisection and animal rights groups. They cannot deny that the most people – vegans aside – do not accord animals the same rights as humans. So they either deny the evidence of history – eg the key role of Banting, Best and a dog called Marjorie in the discovery and development of insulin – or claim that animals are no longer necessary in medical research.

The In The Know article outlines the story of insulin and other animal-research-dependent medical advances. So what case does the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection make against animal research in this article? They resort to a string of distortions and blatant lies. Here’s the worst example:

‘… only about 20% of experiments are for medical purposes. Others are for products such as household cleaners, fertilisers and petrol.’

Petrol??? I don’t know where they got that one from.

The animal experimentation figures are publicly available, if a little complex (that’s why we provide an accessible summary on the RDS website). But using some simple arithmetic, it’s clear that the safety testing of household products and agricultural chemicals together added up to just 1.2% of all animal experiments in 2005.

Tests on non-medical products are a very small percentage of animal use. In fact 96% of all the animal procedures in 2005 were used for some form of biomedical research – basic and applied research, medicines development, and testing of new medical and veterinary products.

The incoming director of BUAV, if she is at all concerned about the truth, has a big clean-up job to do.