I will always rate a man’s life as of greater importance to me than any animals – not a view shared by all but tell me whose life you would save – a starving man or a starving animal and I will and have always chose the man. My mum died of cancer 4 years ago and the last 6 months of her life were solely as a result of drugs tested on animals – and I stand by my belief that it was worth it.

I support every group which wants such testing to be carried out in as humane a way as possible but I’m afraid when it comes down to the choice between man and animal I come down on our side. I take the anthropomorphic tendencies of the animal rights brigade to be a failure to deal with the real rights of animals – it’s always easier to love a puppy than a spider

Strictly speaking, while I don’t proselytise, I guess, since my vegetarianism is a moral position, I must be judging others – that is what moral choices are about, we universalise them. I find many meat eaters are quite threatened by me being vegetarian, and always ask why, because I think they rightly recognise that by taking that position I am saying that something they do is wrong – even if I don’t come right out and say it, it is implicit in my position. In practice, I wouldn’t ban eating meat, but given the chance I’d really tighten up animal welfare legislation in the meat industry.

With regards to the question about why we shouldn’t kill other animals since they also kill other animals, I think the same argument applies as to why we shouldn’t kill young children who kill other humans – they are unable to recognise the morality of the action, that doesn’t mean it isn’t still wrong to kill them.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30800

Re laboratory protests, I may have previously made the suggestion that research sites should be twinned with honest-to-goodness animal torture facilities in secure locations on the other side of the world, probably for food production, so that if one is stopped from working then the other is ramped up and the net effect on animal welfare is zero.

It’s particularly galling to see American business for instance use rhetoric about homeland security and standing up and not giving in to terrorists, but when the animal rights crew just vandalise their cars, they cave in like meringue.

As I have previously said I don’t align myself at all with the AR ‘movement’, and not all vegetarians and vegans do. We each have our own reasons for becoming ‘veggie’ but it doesn’t automatically mean that we believe that we should stop using animals for medical research for example.

Sorry if this seems a bit like a counter-attack but its something I deal with everytime I tell someone I’m vegetarian and it can get to be a bit of a touchy subject!

And as for the thought of the animal rights movement that we enjoy testing on animals, that actually makes me really annoyed, what sort of people do they think we are? More misassumptions about those evil scientists who actually have no soul. If there were a viable and cost effective alternative then it would be being used. As far as I know you still can’t fully study drug interactions in cell-cultures as they don’t take into account pharmokinetics for example. When there is a better alternative it will be used, at the moment we do the best we can in order to save lives and in my mind I can fully appreciate the work being done.

If tissue culture/cell lines – often quoted by the AR people as “viable alternatives” could be used, it would be a damn sight cheaper and easier, not to mention less emotional, as scientists mostly have feelings about animals too. And of course, those alternatives are used much of the time, but for some experiments you need the real thing.

Also, the Uk is one of the most higly regulated places to do animal experiments. If it’s driven out of here, there will be a lot of research institutes opening up in countries where there is little or no regulation, which doesn’t seem in the best interests of the AR people either.

And where do AR people think that “cells” and “tissues” come from anyway?

me too…!!!

Not in the UK they aren’t. I know that the Dutch have used chimps for AIDS research and also I think the Americans.

As for Chimpanzes my understanding is that they rarely used and only when there is no better animal model (e.g. HIV and parkinsons I think).

No one enjoys experimenting on animals – it is very far from fun. If there was an alternative scientists would use them.

After all ID can be summed up as “We can’t fully explain it so it must have been the big beard in the sky”

Creationism can be summed up as “We don’t care if anybody has another explanation, it was the big beard in the sky that did it”

I used to have a very good Religious Education teacher who would cover the whole spectrum of religions but in such a way as to actually make us think about them properly. As opposed to shoving one particular one down our throats which is the way other ones have done it. Personally i think he was a scientist in a previous life