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Eight medical charities have clubbed together to counter the ‘misinformation’
spread by Britain’s antivivisection groups which has led to bricks through
the windows of charity shops in the high street. ‘Animal rights activists
claim that it is possible to make medical advances without animal research.
This is not true,’ says Bridget Ogilvie, director of the Wellcome Trust.
She chairs the new group, The Research for Health Charities Group.

Convincing schoolchildren of the need for animal research, by providing
booklets and visiting speakers, is high on the group’s agenda. The antivivisectionists
have targeted young people so successfully, says Ogilvie, ‘that students
are coming into vet school saying they want nothing to do with experiments
on animals’.

Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs threatened with the risk of violence from extremists are
reluctant to talk of their research in public. Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs have been the
targets of ‘hundreds of incendiary devices’ since 1984 according to Mark
Matfield of the Research Defence Society. ‘But physicians should speak up,
and so should patients – indeed anyone who has been vaccinated,’ says Ogilvie.