cracking down on animal rights protesters in Oxford..if they weren't so violent would they be right

[zippitippitoes]

........is it true that we don't need live animals for medical research if there was a will to invest in more high tech methodology.

Why is animal rights so violent when on the face of it I would have thought it was a popular cause?

Animal testing for cosmetics purposes has largely stopped because of customer pressure.

Animal testing for medical purposes has been significantly reduced as alternative techniques have been developed.

I'm not involved in any research which requires animal testing , but I know that the testing that does go on is extremely tightly controlled, and exists because there is no currently viable alternative. If there were no animal testing, then incidents like that horrendous drug trial recently would be far more common.

The extreme animal rights people are terrorists not bunny-huggers, and the legitimate movement to improve animal welfare has been hijacked by them in the same way that many popular political protests are hijacked by their most extreme wing (poll tax riots).

so for neurology eg Parkinson's disease (one of the Oxford areas of research I think) there is no alternative?

Information on both sides always seems so biased

when you know people who have been targetted and terrorised for the loosest of connections to animal testing all empathy with the cause goes out the window I'm afraid.

exactly Jools..

They are dangerous loons. I have had some contacts with Colin Blakemore from the days when he used to be attached to the physiology dept at Oxford, and his life has been under threat for the past 20-30 years from the animal rights terrorists. He is a very courageous man, and if it were not for people like him being prepared to put their lives at risk, the warped priorities of the extremists would have damaged the cause of scientific research in this country.

The govt should pursue them with the same vigour as they do political/religious terrorists. Sensible discussion about the priorities of animal welfare vs. human need is one thing, but that's not what these guys are after.

completely agree frogs

006, someone I know who works in the next-door building had the same questions about the protesters. So he went out and asked them. The two he spoke to were hardcore vegans, canvas shoes, and said they would refuse medication if it had been tested on animals. Saying is one thing and potential death is another, but he was impressed.

I have some sympathy for the cause of animal welfare - I beleive it's a sign of a civilized society when we treat creatures weaker than ourselves respectfully. That means that eating meat, using animals as pets, medical testing, are all OK provided they are done whilst keeping the animals welfare in mind and they suffer as little as possible. People have to come first but we don't have the right to treat lesser creatures with unneccesarily cruelty. Most people assert that some medical experimentation on animals is neccessary although there are those who would argue that it isn't.

I think the problem is that animals rights protestors genuinely see animals as just as important as human beings. Once you feel like that any cruelty to animals becomes unacceptable, even unbearable...just as it would be if it was happening to people. I think that if you have that mindset and no-one appears to be listening to you, the violence seems the only way forwards.

BTW I have no sympathy for those who commit crimes in the name of animal rights. None whatsoever - they are wrong. Peaceful protest - no problem, violence and intimidation - totally unacceptable.

These people should be picketing the mass and totally unnecessary cruelty to animals that goes on at Bernard Matthews and many other "farms" and leaving responsible scientists to get on with finding cures for diseases such as Parkinson's.
I agree utterly frogs. Legitimate concern over the need to minimise animal experimentation has been hijacked by vicious, unscrupulous trouble-makers.

agree that Blakemore is inspirational figure and that the extremists are finally being unmasked for the cowards they are.

oh and totally agree about the not-so-bootiful bernard et al (anyone see Minette Walters on tv last night? she was so horrified by bse etc that she now rears her own pigs etc to feed her family)

this website is quite interesting\link{http://www.curedisease.net/index.shtml\ cure disease}

I don't have any knowledge to speak of on this issue either way, I just feel that there is a debate but that as others have said it is horribly obscured by extremists and terrorists.

Interesting that Linda Mc Cartny was against animal testing but did choose to take animal tested drugs when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. It is easy to take an absolute stance if it isn't your life on the line.

My husband has a presently un-curable cancer. I want him to live. without animal testing, he will not.

He is a survivor of another , unrealted cancer. He survived that because of animal testing.

For those who disagree with animal testing they should realise that around 80% of possible drugs are found to be too dangerous to use in animal testing phase of drug development. the horrific case of the human volentees would be far more common if it wasn't for animal testing.

Oh and drugs to treat animals also have to be tested on animals.

I suppose the rationale for taking treatments which have already been through the testing process is that the past is done and it would be no benefit to reject those. I find myself at a loss who to believe.

Really zippi? My impression is that there are many more bodysnatching, threat-issuing, car-vandalising loons out there than there are scientists who don't want to reduce animal testing to its absolute minimum...

So the rational would be 'I will live , because there is a treatment for me, but you must die because you have the bad luck to suffer from an incurable disease.'

Don't get me wrong I think that LM was very sensible to take every chance she had to live. As I say, when you don't suffer from an incurable disease it is easy to have a totalitarian view on animal testing.

More dogs and cats are put dowen as unwanted pets each year in the Uk than are used in animal testing. The UK has higher levels of controls on animal welfare in labs than anywhere in the world, just about.

It is harder to get a licence to work on an animal than it is to get a human to enrole in a drug test.

Did anyone see the 'Dispatches' episode on some animal rights activists?

great that is an interesting website..just the sort of information I'm looking for...

reading from there it seems that it is only recently that institutes have started to try and counteract the animal rights protesters by making public statements regarding their rationale for animal testing

I didn't see despatches..I was just interested having seen someone on breakfast this morning to find out more

I will be writing the newsletter for a cutting-edge neurology hospital next week. Inevitably, some of its work involves animal testing. Speaking as a former vegetarian, I don't have any qualms about this at all.

(I used to know a vegan milkman, apropos of very little, by the way.)

I lived pretty close a guinea pig farm before i moved and if the animal rights campaigners had attacked my fathers car, I have hated them but I found it quite gratifying

but only for my own selfish reasons

I would be more moved if the hard-core violent activists volunteered to have the drugs tested on themselves.
Seems a reasonable solution to me,gets rid of animal cruelty and the argument that animal testing is irrelevant in human drug trials.