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.

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:

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!

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!

While SPEAK arrogantly compare themselves to the Tiananmen Square protesters and the seizure of their leaflets by police to censorship of those events by the Chinese government, a quiet and peaceful revolution is underway in Oxfordshire. Tigger first blogged here about Pro-Test and its founder a couple of weeks ago.

Now, with just a few days to go until what promises to be a major pro-research rally in Oxford, the founder of Pro-Test describes how the group came to be formed on an ordinary day out with friends in Oxford last month. It’s worth reading for his good humour in the face of the in-your-face abuse and insults that seem to be the stock-in-trade of ‘peaceful’ animal rights activists.

He starts:

"From a reasonably early age, I’ve felt that science and knowledge are the most important things humanity possesses, and indeed what defines humanity as a species, and separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. My view is that humans are the dominant race on this planet and, not for any spiritual reasons, but pragmatically, we therefore have a right to use lower life forms for our benefit. I’m not talking about using animals simply for our amusement, and I’m not suggesting that animal welfare isn’t an issue, but what I do believe is that if an animal can be used to save a human, or even significantly improve human quality of life, then that’s entirely justifiable.”
Laurie a.k.a. Sqrrl101

No SPEAK-style grandiosity for Laurie. He concludes by placing medical research and benefits for patients squarely at the centre of the debate where it should be:

"receiving e-mails of support from people with life-threatening diseases thanking me for fighting for their right to treatment has been great."

Anyone can hang out at the Oxford University chat forum, where students debate the issues of the day. Last time I looked it had around 1,000 posts in several threads about animal research and animal rights extremism. This debate seems to have been prompted by the upcoming student-led Pro-Test in favour of the University research centre currently under construction. As you might expect from this premier seat of learning, the discussion is mostly articulate, well-informed and fair-minded. Light relief comes in the form of wit, banter and expletives. From the students, that is.

A handful of animal rights activists are involved, presumably trying to change the views of most students who can see the need for animal research. The activists aren’t doing themselves any favours. One, a “former marine” who calls himself “Britches”, doesn’t seem to have grasped even the first principles of debate. He had posted no less than 200 times when he said:

I myself do not care what the majority of students at Oxford University think. Anyone who is for the lab and is a student at Oxford are only shit on the bottom of my shoe. Just a dirty mess you wipe off. “Britches", 13 February 2006

I wonder why he’s wasting his time there, then?

SPEAK keep providing me with such good fodder: in their savage personal attack on Pro-Test’s leader (see Pro-Test: in very good hands), they also have a pop at RDS’ very own Simon Festing about his appointment to…

the top position of the main organisation sponsored by the vivisection industry, the Research Defence Society (RDS); a man who played a pivotal role in the campaign to stop the Newbury bypass, a campaign often referred to as ‘The Battle of Newbury’ because of the often illegal nature of the campaign, and thus hardly a man in a position to condemn others for acting in a manner Governments deem unacceptable.
SPEAK, 1st Feb 2006

I decided to ask Simon about his shady past.  Here’s what he had to say about the questionable tactics…

Oxford latest - a new anti-antivivisection protest group is in town, wittily named Pro-Test.

SPEAK seems to be immensely threatened by this new development and has launched a scathing personal attack - of no less than 1,015 words! - on Pro-Test’s founder, Laurie (16, male, and wants to be a med student), which is oblivious to the fact that he is entitled to his own opinion – something SPEAK is very hot on claiming for itself.  It seems that the only people that can exercise their democratic right to free speech are those who conform to the SPEAK manifesto.

Now, I was going to comment on SPEAK’s article, pointing out that attacking a minor so ferociously (and on points irrelevant to the subject at hand) could be seen as a bit pathetic and desperate.  Or I could note that Laurie’s webposts that SPEAK has got so worked up over are either surprisingly insightful and grounded for a 16-year-old (one notes that the government/ society’s position on drugs is a little inconsistent when you consider the status of alcohol and nicotine and the damage they do – but crucially, do in a taxable way), or obviously tongue-in-cheek.  I personally found it refreshing to see that an adolescent can comment on their growing pains in a humorous, articulate and gently self-deprecating manner rather than the self-indulgent angst more commonly exhibited, and which I certainly witnessed amongst my own peers.

However, having seen Laurie’s mature response which is short and to the point:

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. 

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.

The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection claims to be disappointed that the Animals drama-documentary screened on digital television this Monday concentrated so heavily on animal rights extremism. BUAV are dismayed that the programme did not allow either anti-vivisection scientists or organisations working entirely within the law an opportunity to be heard.

We guess that’s a rare case of disappointment all round then. We were dismayed that there was so little portrayal of the animals which make up 96% of all research animals, namely rodents, fish and birds. The shocking images we see from the antivivisection groups are far from representative, so much of what goes on in research centres is probably just too dull for television!