At a public meeting in Oxford town hall last night, the campaigning group VERO attempted to set out its agenda for ‘humane’ research into the 21st century. This obviously excluded humane animal research! We welcome the meeting because we believe in open debate about animal research.
VERO are perfectly entitled to field four committed animal rights campaigners as their chair and speakers. But this is hardly going to give them the scientific credibility which they claim to seek.
It is astonishing that people like Peter Tatchell are given a platform to critique animal research. It is obvious that he has absolutely no clue how and why animals are used for scientific progress and testing. He made the same old argument that medicines are passed safe in animals but then go on to cause side effects in humans. This has long since been discredited. In the example that he gave, Opren, he failed to mention the extensive testing carried out in human clinical trials before the medicine was released onto the market. Opren certainly did cause serious and frequently fatal side-effects in elderly patients who had reduced renal function. This pointed if anything to a deficiency in the clinical testing regime. But it is well-known that it is sometimes impossible to pick up all side-effects before a medicine is released. That is what post clinical surveillance of drug side-effects is all about. Mr Tatchell has obviously not bothered to read the report of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics which deconstructed his fallacy in some detail.
Gill Langley gave her usual distorted and misleading presentation which suggested that the antivivisection groups were the only ones with any commitment to replacing the use of animals in research. She failed to mention the massive and sustained investment in new technology within the scientific community to develop alternatives. A good example is the way that high-throughput screening is now carried out mainly in computer models rather than in animals—all due to improved technology developed by the pharmaceutical industry.
Having read much of Richard Ryder’s writings on animal experiments, the overwhelming impression one gets is of a heightened sense of self-importance. Everything he said last night confirmed that. He was full of gushing praise for himself and his invention of the ridiculous concept of speciesism as if he was the ultimate authority on all matters of animal research and related philosophy.
We recognised almost all of the animal rights campaigners in the room that evening. Let VERO waste their time preaching to the converted. Meanwhile, let’s hurry up and build the Oxford research centre to improve the housing and welfare conditions for the animals involved in essential and lifesaving research at Oxford University.
