In a letter published by The Observer on Sunday, antivivisectionist Richard Mountford of Animal Aid (for some reason he doesn’t mention his affiliation) tries to align pro-life and antivivisection campaigning:
It is absurd for so-called right-to-life campaigners to object to medical research on cells from dead human embryos, when they do not object to research on live animals (’Scientists turn dead cells into live tissue’, News, last week). They may feel squeamish about using human cells, but that is not a moral argument.
Richard Mountford, letter in The Observer, 1 October 2006
So far so good. But then he states that: ‘thousands of animals suffer in experiments every day in British laboratories’ and says we should invest in stem cell research and ‘stop using cruel animal tests’. Most scientists agree that suffering should be minimised, and I do not believe that animal tests can be characterised as cruel.
But the main point is that stem cell research and stem cell therapies depend very much on animal research, particularly research involving mice. And arguably we would not have progressed very far in this field if it weren’t for Dolly the sheep. Animal Aid seems to inhabit a fact-free zone.
For more evidence on the importance of animals in this research, look no further than the RDS web page Stem cell therapies and mouse research.
