I WISH to highlight the plight of animals in laboratories around the world that are experimented on, on behalf of manufacturers of products such as drugs, chemicals household and industrial substances, and which some medical charities are involved with.

At these facilities dogs, monkeys, rats, mice, rabbits, pigs, guinea pigs, goats, cows, birds, and fish are used for experiments.

In addition to these terrible experiments the animals also have to endure mistreatment and blunders in the actual experiments adding to their distress and suffering, for example, Miscalculations in dosing result in severe suffering, death and premature termination of studies, which will then be repeated.

Animal tests are being conducted when human studies are already underway.

And so it goes on, and even though there is a code of practice for the housing and care of animals used in research, the code offers poor protection to laboratory animals.

In addition, many people don’t seem to he aware of the many medical charities that are involved in funding and promoting animal experiments. I believe that the public has the right to know what their hard earned money and donations are being spent on. However, some medical charities are reluctant to give details about the animal experiments that they fund.

Even when medical charities do publish information on their websites it is often littered with scientific jargon and fails to detail which species are used, the number of animals, and exactly the research entails.

What we do know, is that using animals as models of human diseases is scientifically flawed.

Since diseases are created artificially in animals, studying them in labs can tell us little of direct relevance to the cause and progression of the equivalent conditions in people. What we also know is that there is a range of advanced techniques to replace the use of animals in experiments which tend to be quicker, cheaper and much more reliable because they avoid the problem of species differences.

Organisations like The Dr Hadwen Trust are working to develop such techniques as well as reliable medical research without the use of animals.

I would like to ask your readers to donate only to those charities that do not conduct or fund animal tests. To find out about charities that don’t conduct or fund animal experiments please visit animalaid.co.uk.

Thank you.

Mrs Alison Yates Union Street Egerton