There is a new kid in town and he supports animal testing for medical purposes (see todays Guardian)- he and some like minded people have launched a group called Pro-test. They marched several hundred strong in Oxford where a new lab (likely to carry out animal testing) is to be built.
I detest animal cruelty and I believe that if possible animal testing should be avoided at all costs, but if there is one thing I dislike more than animal cruelty, is is those that adopt terror techniques in the name of anti-vivisection. Bombings, attacking family homes, digging up bodies and the like. I cannot support the terrorising of people (often innocent of contact with animal research) and I believe that those who prioritise the rights of animals over humans are wrong headed at best and criminally stupid at worst.
if you want to ensure that your voice of protest against animal testing will not be supported by the "man in the street", exhuming an old ladies body and then holding it to ransome is not likely to be effective in promoting your views - a criminal who desecrates a grave is not the best spokesperson for humane behaviour. Someone who would bomb or terrorise the family of a lab employee is not someone who is sensitive enough of pain and suffering to advocate the rights of animals. An individual who foregoes democracy in favour of guerilla tactics and violence is not someone who should be welcomed into society at all. Terror is never justifiable not matter what your cause, for if you can argue your case with a bomb then so can the 7/11 terrorists and those who devastated New York.
I would put my name to any petition that called for an end to unnecessary or frivlous experimentation on animals if the cause had not been tainted by the stupidity, criminality and terror tactics of those at the fringes of the antivivisection lobby.
