A UK patients advocate group has attacked anti-vivisection activists, alleging—in a report published last week—that they mislead the public and fail to invest in research designed to find alternatives to animal research.
The report, Anti-vivisection Unmasked, was published by the UK charity Seriously Ill for Medical Research. Its membership includes patients and their relatives and carers, and its medical panel includes Professor Roy Calne and Professor Robert Winston.
The report argued that some anti-vivisection groups use “tactics of deception” designed to manipulate public opinion. These alleged tactics included use of old photographs of unknown origin—some not even of research animals—in their propaganda to imply that these represented conditions in today's laboratories.
A key criticism was the lack of expenditure by anti-vivisection groups on funding research into methods of replacing the use of animals in medical research. The report claimed that about £531000 ($758800; €871 500) was spent trying to find ways of replacing animals in experiments by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, the National Anti-Vivisection Society, and Animal Aid for 1990 to 2000, out of a total income of over £31.2m.
Anti-vivisection Unmasked is available from info@simr.org.uk