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?

they did attack his car, I wrote that sentence very weirdly without previewing

It seems to me that some of the protesters value animal life above human. The situation of the woman's body being stolen from her grave because her daughter had married into the family farming guinea pigs left me feeling totally sick. I think that the 'creatures' involved should serve their sentence in full, and be banned from using anything that has been tested on animals in the future, if they ever need it.

she waorked at the place aswell
and yes it was sick

I didn't know she worked there KPK. Having said that, it really upset me. I could only put myself in her daughter's shoes, and how I would feel if it was my mum.

they were quite heavily connected with the factory
and yes I would be too

but quite happily laughed at my dads car being trashed (I will have to get this deleted now)

the extremists who use terror tactics are vile, pure and simple

Dhis a doctor and practices new surgical grafts on pigs before he gets to do humans. He goes abroad to do this because of the extremists here closing down a lab. ironically the welfare standards abroad are much lower than the UK so thay shot themselves in the foot there!

I think renaldo has a good point. Closing down labs in this country isn't going to stop testing. Drugs have to be tested otherwise they won't be licensed. It just moves the location. Not a victory at all I wouldn't have thought.

When I was working the in Vet School in Edinburgh in the 1990s they set fire to the Tropical Diseases Research centre. Now let's think about this. This was an institute that looked into treating tropical diseases of animals and training vets to work in developing countries.

How exactly did they think setting fire to the insitute was going to help animal welfare?

And she is also right that we have very high standards that are not found in all other countries.

Precisely!

You were at Dick Vet? I was in George Square in the 90s, (Biochemistry).

Yep the Dear Old Dick

Tamum is just round the corner too.

My degree was in Biochemistry, but that was back in the mists of time in the early 1980s

BOO (hello!)

Yes, a lot of drugs companies have already moved their animal testing overseas. I doubt if anywhere is as well-regulated as the UK to be honest. I can actually have some respect for the views of protestors like the ones Pruni mentions; what I can't stand is all this arrant nonsense about how it can all be done using cell culture and computer modelling (WTF?), and it's laziness that makes scientists use animals. No-one in their right mind would use animals rather than cell culture for experiments unless they had to. There are lots of things that can be studied well in cells but scarcely anything neurological, for starters.

Quite, you show me a tissue culture that can model a seizure, or depression or Parkinsons disease! How do you use tissue culture to see if a new anticonvulsant has an impact on memory and learning, for example.

How can a tissue culture test if a drug is metabolised in the liver to be a neurotoxin, or someting that impared cardiac function!

so lets all say to people with motor neurone disease....sory you have to die shall we because we think that rats and mice are more important? And most animals used in reaserch are rodents, they just don't put them on the posters , they don't look cute enough.

Not all animal rights protesters are violent, or dangerous, or extremists. I know several animal rights protesters and admire them for putting themselves at risk for the sake of animals, while hunt sabbing for instance. They get hassle and prejudice from the people they are protesting against, the police, and also the general public who presume they are all rabid nutters. A dear friend of mine was harrassed by the police for months and wrongly charged with various crimes because his name found its way onto some 'animal rights loonies' database :(

Here in Oxford there are quite a lot of demos, leafletting etc. The protestors are, well, to put it kindly, not masters of rhetoric. They just print lies. I forget the specific example but I remember talking to someone who was working on whatever it was I'd read on a leaflet and he was so depressed - it wasn't even a different view being expressed, it was just lies.
The University, they say, are constantly dissembling, and no doubt that has a basis in truth, but there is no way in hell a gang of shouty would-be terrorists are going to get them to engage with them. I wish they would get that it's a dignity thing - the University will deal with intelligent protest - and who knows, there might be things they could change - but a few scruffy ranters with a megaphone who hassle their staff for four hours every Thursday are onto a loser.

We get them on a Saterday in our local shopping centre. Some of the pictures are so obviously doctored it is crazy. They have pictures of kittens with their eyes sewn shut. Now I know this research has been done, but these guys obviously felt that the pictures wern't emotive enough and them drew in very obvious suture threads, felt pen thick. Now I've seen sutures and they are not that thick.

They also peddle the lie that animal testing didn't prevent Thalidomide. True. But what they don't tell you was that the law was tightened up and increased the amount of animal testing done after the drug reactions of thalidomide were seen. If there had been more animal testing prior to Thalidomide, the problem might never have happened. but that doesn't stop them trotting out the old lie.

I heard of a couple of chemistry graduate students who were so fed up with the Oxford animal rights protestors - their dept is opposite and obv nothing to do with testing on animals but they got abused and intimidated every time they were around. They painted a huge banner that said "We Pour Acid On Monkey Cocks" and hung it in their window. The protestors apparently went apeshit. Their supervisor got back from lunch to find them being reprimanded by the police....

i work in medical research (have changed my name for VERY obvious reasons)

we recently recieved a threating letter at work and have had more in the past.

the hoops we've had to jump through tp get a licence to test on animals were numerous.

Its in the reseachers best interests to treat the animals well, you want the best results from your trial.

we do exhaustive non-animal tests first

i feel all extremist animal rights activist should put themselves forward for clinical trials, then they might just see how important the animal testing stages are.

Pruni, having mis-spent my twenties getting pissed with Oxford Chemists, you story doesn't surprise me at all! LMAO, they were all ballsy, crazyloons in my days, and I'm so glad to see thay haven't changed!

All power to them!

I'm a biology student at oxford and I agree they're putting out a rubbish message, distort the truth a lot to make it more shocking and aren't really acheiving anything.
I don't see how setting college's properties on fire and threatening builders who work in a completely different part of the university is going help anything

Don't you somehow feel that if animal testing was banned completely, some of these yobs would simply find another 'cause' on which to vent their anger.

Agree with Marina and MB. I live in the Oxford area and have been horrifed that building has had to be shut down because of the terrorizing tactics of some of these people. These scientists don't enjoy causing animals pain - they are in the business of trying to heal. I'm all for making sure controls are much stricter to make sure animals suffer as little pain as possible and animal rights protestors should focus on that in my view. And yes, why aren't they picketing that bloody man Bernard Matthews? Can't believe he is still in business.