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.