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This week New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ begins an eight-week series on animal experiments.
Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs, vets, industrialists and animal rights campaigners will all
find a voice here, and social scientists will help to put the whole issue
in context. Our aim is to air a broad spectrum of opinion and provide a
variety of perspectives on what is sadly becoming an increasingly polarised
debate.

What is surprising is how many of the voices – even those on opposite
sides of the ‘barricades’ – are saying similar things. There is widespread
concern for animals, and for good science, medical advance and safe products.
The trick, of course, is to find the balance: to weigh likely benefit against
likely animal suffering, and to ensure, as the law requires, that only ‘necessary’
work is carried out.

Such judgments cannot be cut and dried. Researchers writing in the series
will discuss the criteria behind such difficult decisions. The fear persists
in many quarters, however, that it is much more common for the scientist
to be given the benefit of any doubt, rather than the animals.

The best way to dispel such concerns, many authors in the series will
argue, is to offer the public a more meaningful role in the scrutiny of
animal research. Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs and civil servants have to face up to the fact
that they can no longer be the sole arbiters of what is good and true, just
and right. The public want a say too.

Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs often argue that the public knows too little about science
and medicine to be worth listening to. But sociological research in Britain
and the US suggests that it is unhelpful, even counterproductive, to brand
the public as ‘ignorant’ or simply ‘misled by the propaganda’ of the antivivisection
movement. As Andrew Rowan, a vet who directs the Tufts Center for Animals
and Public Policy in Massachusetts, puts it: ‘The public can understand
rather sophisticated science when it believes this necessary, and it does
not need detailed scientific knowledge in order to give thoughtful consideration
to a complex issue.’ Patronising the public is a ‘recipe for failure’, he
says.

‘Any resolution of the controversy must be based on an intelligent and
open debate,’ says Rowan. Our series attempts to open this debate.