An article to be published next week setting out our views on the direction of the debate about animal research (in ATLA - Alternatives to Laboratory Animals) likewise points out that:

‘Many medical advances are still likely to depend to some extent on animal-based research’.

And our advice in our Communications Handbook to research institutions considering their own position statements is that:

‘Research using animals has made a huge contribution to advances in medicine and surgery, which have brought major improvements in the health and well-being of humans’.

We will return later to the rest of Robert Matthews article (available online only by payment or membership of the Royal Society of Medicine), which is a deeply flawed critique of those who defend animal research. In the meantime, there is little point in getting dragged into his pointless and pedantic arguments about exactly which statements are right or wrong, while patients still need vital research to be done.

Animal research is morally and scientifically defensible whether it has contributed to many, most or just a few medical advances. Permission to carry out animal research (through the project licence) is made on a case-by-case basis only after the potential benefits are weighed against the likely harms to the animals.

There are many important issues to be debated about animal research. We need to concentrate on progressing the 3Rs, improving experimental design, better analysing the findings of the research (with more systematic reviews), improving animal models, critically challenging the applicability of animal models in certain fields of research, and finding replacement alternatives. Let’s face up to the real challenges of today. Is Matthews up for that?