THE view of Sylvia Noble (Letters, June 20) combine curiously insular attitude, admiration for the Third Reich and inaccuracies about medical history. Quite an achievement in five short paragraphs.

I shall confine myself mainly to correcting her claims about tuberculosis. TB has never been eradicated from any country, although vaccines and antibiotics, developed using animals, have certainly helped to reduce the toll of serious illness and death.

The situation now is that more people are susceptible to TB, partly because of immune deficiency caused by HIV/AIDS, and this has coincided with increasing antibiotic resistance of the TB microbe.

The resurgence of TB, and the need to conquer other serious conditions such as cancer, cystic fibrosis and Alzheimer's disease, means that medical research is as vital as ever.

A small proportion of that research will involve animals. As long as we use these animals humanely, in minimum number and only when necessary, then I believe most people find this acceptable.

One last point: people in Africa have no natural immunity to the Ebola virus either. Ms Noble's compassion should extend to the 244 people who died in the 1995 outbreak in Zaire.

Another example of why medical research must continue. Not to mention the 18 million adults currently infected with HIV, and four million of these who have so far developed AIDS, again mostly in Africa.

BARBARA DAVIES, Deputy Director, RDS, Great Marlborough Street, London.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.