Date published: 2006/05/14
The BBC says:
Anti-vivisectionists have criticised Tony Blair's pledge to sign an online petition which backs animal testing.
The prime minister, who condemned the "appalling" actions of animal rights extremists, will join around 13,000 people on the People's Petition.
He said threats against GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) shareholders showed why those in medical research had to be protected.
However, the National Anti-Vivisection Society described Mr Blair's commitment as "hugely irresponsible".
Jan Creamer, the society's chief executive, said: "We understand this petition has only 13,000 names.
"This is compared to over 20 times that number of people who support animal welfare groups on non-animal research, plus the overwhelming public support for replacement of animals in testing.
"This petition is being run by an extremist group of vested interests representing a very narrow area of medical research.
"They want to see the UK continue with an outdated method of research as opposed to taking up more advanced, non-animal scientific methods."
Rather silly the comments by Creamer. Most people in the UK suport animal testing for medical purposes (rightly or wrongly), and the people supporting the petition are hardly extremist by any definition. And if you ask people whether they would like animals replaced in testing they are hardly going to say no, so it's a totally meaningless statistic. And you would expect the anti-vivisection groups to get much more support for their petitions (or whatever) since they feel much more strongly about the issue than the people on the other side, so that is another meaningless statistic. Quoting meaningless statistics hardly promotes your cause. And perhaps the anti-vivisection groups should put their money where their mouths are and put money into a new drug company that would use these wonderful "advanced, non-animal scientific methods" and see how far they get.
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