It should have been as dull as ditchwater. A judgement is expected today in this week’s High Court hearing about a few of the finer technical details of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. This is a judicial review, the culmination of three years of costly legal wrangling by lawyers representing the UK’s oldest antivivisection society and the Home Office.

But Michelle Thew, BUAV’s Chief Executive, is well-known for bending the truth in media interviews. Michelle has used every opportunity she can to ‘sex up’ the judicial review by repeating BUAV’s unfounded and irrelevant allegations against Cambridge University marmoset research. 

Following an infiltration of the University, BUAV made a number of claims which, on thorough investigation by the Home Office, proved unfounded. The University was exonerated. In fact the judicial review does not relate specifically to either primate research or Cambridge.

The low point was Michelle’s appearance on BBC Two’s Newsnight on Tuesday. Against her barefaced lies, leading brain surgeon Professor Tipu Aziz from Oxford University, who didn’t know anything much about the judicial review or the Cambridge saga, did his best. Presenter Emily Maitless didn’t seem to know what was going on either.

Old Balls? Ah yes, that would be Balls, Michael, father of young Balls, Ed, and former director of alternatives organisations FRAME and ECVAM. He has been restyled as an eminent zoologist, former Home Office advisor and of course father of the aforementioned cabinet minister.

Balls used to be content with sniping at the scientific community from the relative safety of the pages of FRAME publications. But his family connections seem to have attracted the media spotlight, and he was unusually quick off the mark early on Monday, when he released a statement via FRAME, ostensibly about the judicial review but also commenting on the rise in animal procedures. His statement was out on the wires before the Home Office had even released the figures.

Balls popped up in the intro to the aforementioned Newsnight discussion. If you ‘listen again’ before a week is up, you can also hear him enjoying his new-found fame on BBC radio and claiming, unchallenged, that scientists ‘do unnecessary experiments on animals’. If he has evidence of unnecessary experiments, I wonder why he hasn’t given it to the appropriate authorities. He should put up or shut up, as they say.