Protest Against Oxford University Animal Research

July 23, 2005

Researchers Speak Out Against Animal Tests

The scientific director of Europeans for Medical Progress today spoke strongly against the building of the proposed primate experimentation lab in Oxford. The lab's construction has so far been halted for just over a year by popular protest.According to Dr Jarrod Bailey, scientific director of Europeans for Medical Progress, 82% of GPs believe that animal experiments produce medically misleading results. Europeans for Medical Progress is an independent organisation of scientists and medical professionals that has prepared a petition calling for an independent investigation into the scientific merits of animal-based medical research. "As someone who has spent years looking for a scientific justification behind animal experimentation, I think 'fraud' is the right word," Dr Bailey announced. He stated that although animal research has been "involved" in every major medical advance (as the pharmaceutical industry claims), its involvement has been incidental at best - and often a serious setback to scientific advances. "All progress on AIDS has been despite animal experiments, which have produced misleading results," he said. He also said that research into cancer, stroke, multiple sclerosis, parkinson's disease and other serious illnesses has been distracted and delayed by scientifically invalid and ultimately misleading results from research using animals to model human responses. Even the notoriously conservative US Food and Drug Administration describes animal experimentation as "using 20th century technology for 21st century problems". Dr Bailey said that using animal experimentation causes deaths through the release of drugs incorrectly found to be safe in animal trials. Adverse drug reactions is the fourth largest single cause of death in the UK.

July 24, 2005

> There's just been a short report on the telly news about this, but I didn't realise quick enough to see whether you were on the film.

I'm impressed it got on the news! It was fairly quiet... except for one guy the police seemed to take a dislike to for no apparent reason. From what we could make out they were trying to confiscate his video camera because they didn't like being filmed... either that or they thought it was a dangerous weapon.

What was particularly interesting was that there was a number of Met police there... they obviously don't have enough to keep themselves busy in London at the moment (excuse the sarcasm).

BB

Peter

July 24, 2005

Hi Peter

Maybe they fancied shooting someone in a different place!

BBJo

-

Peter

Sunday, July 24, 2005 12:18 AM

Re: Protest Against Oxford University Animal Research

> There's just been a short report on the telly news about this, but I didn't realise quick enough to see whether you were on the film.

I'm impressed it got on the news! It was fairly quiet... except for one guy the police seemed to take a dislike to for no apparent reason. From what we could make out they were trying to confiscate his video camera because they didn't like being filmed... either that or they thought it was a dangerous weapon.

What was particularly interesting was that there was a number of Met police there... they obviously don't have enough to keep themselves busy in London at the moment (excuse the sarcasm).

BB

Peter