Notorious British Vivisector Speaking At Christchurch Conference

Animal rights activists say one of the speakers at an international animal research conference next week, is well known in Britain for his brain damage experiments on monkeys. Animal Aid, the largest animal rights group in the UK has condemned Passinghams "research".

Animal Aid, the largest animal rights group in the UK, says Dick Passingham of Oxford University has twice received the groups Mad Science Award list in recent years.

Passingham won an Animal Aid Mad Science Award in 1997 for his "work" on monkeys. This involved surgically brain-damaging them, then monitoring their frustration when food was placed within their sight but out of reach. The monkeys resorted to licking the bars and biting their own limbs.

This month he won one of the 2001 Mad Science Awards, again for brain-damaging monkeys - this time in 16 places, followed by 16 more injections into the brain a week later. The miserable creatures then had to perform repetitious tests, sometimes more than 2,000 times.

Animal Aid Science researcher Kathy Archibald says the experiments are cruel and pointless.

"All this to ascribe human functions to brain structures - something that can only be achieved by studying the human brain. Many scientists are doing precisely that, with far more ingenious and elegant studies in volunteers, using innovative techniques such as TMS (trans-cranial magnetic stimulation) and sophisticated scanning and imaging machines" she said.

The Director of Animal Aid, Andrew Tyler, added "Monkeys are supposed to be the most protected of all laboratory animals in the UK - under legislation that is held up as a shining example to the rest of the world. Experiments such as these show that such claims are a sham and that every year in British laboratories thousands of monkeys are suffering unimaginable and pointless torments".

Animal Aid's Mad Science Awards can be seen at www.animalaid.org.uk

It is interesting to see that Novartis appear to be sponsoring this session of the conference. They are no stranger to torturing primates either. Novartis' subsidiary, Imutran, was responsible for another of this year's Mad Science Awards; horrifying xenotransplantation experiments already exposed (by Uncaged Campaigns www.uncaged.co.uk, py61@dial.pipex.com) for their shocking cruelty and risk to public health.

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