Anyone who has followed the debate about the use of animals in research for some time may recall a bizarre claim by the anti-vivisectionist Vernon Coleman, who wrote a column for the Sunday People. He insists, right up to this day on his website, that it is ‘official’ that animal experiments don’t work. This claim was made on the basis that no one responded to his challenge to find just one person whose life had been saved by animal experiments. The challenge went on for some time, and anti-vivisectionists still refer to it in their letters to us.

It goes without saying that Vernon Coleman himself was going to be the judge of whether this challenge had been met. It never seemed to dawn on Coleman that no one would take seriously such a ridiculous publicity stunt. He convinced himself that there was some kind of desparate search by the scientific community to find such a patient. As a result of all this, he came to the deluded belief that the failure of anyone to respond to this challenge amounted to an ‘official’ admission that animal experimentation does not work. We all watched, perplexed, as the farce played itself out.

Now we have an equally bizarre claim from the group Europeans for Medical Progress (EMP) to amuse us. EMP claim to have ‘won’ the only debate on animal experimentation in which an ‘official’ vote was taken. We can only assume that they are referring to the students’ union debate at Sheffield University, which they recently highlighted as having won. Much as we admire Sheffield University, which carries out high quality animal research, we struggle to work out exactly what is meant by the ‘official’ nature of this vote.

And there’s another small detail. Votes were taken at the student union debates on animal research at Oxford University in 2006, as well as Durham University in 2005, both of which went overwhelmingly in favour of animal research. So the claim is not even accurate. As it happens, EMP did not take part in any of those debates. Perhaps that’s the point. EMP have already rejected the views of all credible scientific organisations around the world of the medical benefits of animal research. So to them, like Vernon Coleman, ‘official’ must simply mean anything they agree with! Hardly worth the effort of making the claim.