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patting himself on the back he should consider two points: (i) the merits of two recent papers are in doubt and may be withdrawn (see GeorginaTheGiraffe’s recent blog entry) – oh dear; and (ii) unfortunately for Bailey, the papers he has managed to publish display the fact that he’s a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…

In his role as EMP’s scientific director Bailey frequently goes on record claiming that animal research provides no beneficial information that can be extrapolated to humans… except, as JC points out on Oxford Gossip (Scientists against vivisection? Jarrod Bailey?), Bailey has published papers whose results relied on using products derived from animals – antibodies.  Yup, rather than prove everyone else wrong by developing some other detection system that will work better than the current animal-reliant model, Bailey has opted for the easy (or is that ‘only’) route and swallowed his beliefs, falling off his high horse in the process.

For those who might not know the ins and outs of antibodies, they provide a very handy detection system the very nature of which relies on antibodies derived from a variety of animals.  Seeing as JC provides the best and simplest explanation I’ve seen, I won’t reinvent the wheel… I’ll just warn you that once you start reading those discussion threads the rampant stupidity, lack of understanding and woeful ignorance will boggle your mind.  As another OxGoss regular puts it to an antiviv/ animal rights contributor after a particularly spectacular display of obtuse ignorance…

Tryptamine (post #10 in the discussion thread)
Look, you have access to the internet. This sort of ignorance is not an excuse. Look up a good, science website (not propaganda) and read about what antibodies actually are. By displaying such total absence of the slightest grasp of what you’re talking about, you’re letting your side down.

In case you’re wondering what provoked this reaction, it was in response to the following (spelling mistakes, bad grammar and punctuation abuse are Greenworlds’ own):

greenworlds (post #5 in the discussion thread)
Not sure I understand what you are saying..anti-sheep antibodies are you now saying that sheep are viruses? I can’t see your logic at all...what are you assocating gaots and sheep and human being...are the mad scientists at work again...Maybe they could turn be into a goat. What I’m saying is use human DNA..died or alive..use the technology available for research not the primative ones.

With this kind of intellect on display, all I can say is rather them (JC, Tryptamine etc) than me – I’m not too patient!

And not forgetting the main point of this blog, I’ll use JC’s apt comments one final time to summarise:

JC (post #1 in the discussion thread)
So Jarrod Bailey opposes animal experiments and calls them meaningless - except when he uses the products of animal experiments in his own work (antibodies) ...oh, and previous animal experiments aren’t meaningless when written up by Bailey for scientific journals.

I wonder if Jarrod can spell “hypocrite” ?