SHELLEY Simmons, of the National Anti Vivisection Society (Letters, July 17) attacks the use of animals in research as "unreliable, unethical and unnecessary."

Mainstream medicine and science would certainly disagree with this extreme view.

Any serious and impartial study of medical history shows that studies using animals, far from being unreliable, have been crucial to most major medical advances. Many of the major medical advances of this century - vaccines, insulin, antibiotics, modern anaesthetics, kidney dialysis, heart pacemakers, etc - depended on the use of animals in research.

Of course, researchers should use non-animal methods wherever possible and animals must be used in minimum numbers and cared for properly. But this does not mean that animals are unnecessary for medical and scientific progress. Some will be needed in medical research for the foreseeable future.

If NAVS were to succeed in their objective of eliminating all laboratory animal use in medical research, the chance of finding better treatments for serious conditions such as cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease would be seriously affected.

Most people would see such an obstacle to life-saving research as unethical. In a straight choice between saving patients and saving animals, I think I know where most people would cast their ethical vote.

BARBARA DAVIES, Deputy Director, Research DefenceSociety, Great Marlborough Street, London W1.

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