Kathy Archibald, director of the antivivisection group Europeans for Medical Progress, writing recently to The Gloucester Citizen, stretches the truth so far it breaks. She calls for animal research to be judged on ‘facts, not rhetoric’ then has the audacity to say: 

Patient safety group Europeans for Medical Progress - supported by 245 MPs and 83% of GPs - suggests a scientific evaluation to settle the matter once and for all.

and

Pro-vivisectionists are lobbying hard against an evaluation, which begs the question: what are they afraid of?

Three points:

1.  When has Europeans for Medical Progress ever done anything for ‘patient safety’? It also claims, with absolutely no evidence, to be an organisation of ‘scientists and medical professionals’.

2.  83% of GPs and 245 MPs may well agree that independent and transparent scientific evaluation of the use of animals as surrogate humans in drug safety testing and medical research (this is the part of the text of parliamentary Early Day Motion 92) is a good idea. That doesn’t mean they are EMP supporters.

3.  ‘Pro-vivisectionists are lobbying hard against an evaluation’ – I don’t think so. See our news item on the RDS website (and we did subsequently publish the article in RDS News - winter 2005 issue, page 8) and my recent blog discussing a rather limited evaluation of this sort. Qualified support and mild criticism, I’d say.