These results confirm that a silent majority of doctors do not believe that
animal tests are the safety net that the public and medical profession are
frequently assured they are by the government and the pharmaceutical
industry.

A recent article in the British Medical Journal entitled, 'Where is the
evidence that animal research benefits humans' concluded that animal studies
should not be conducted 'until their validity ... to clinical medicine has
been assessed'. This new survey is indicative of this developing scepticism
about the value of animal experiments.

Adolfo Sansolini, Chief Executive of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV)  says,  "The early promise of the Labour government has turned into full and blind support for the animal experimentation industry. The BUAV only recently revealed that the Government had paid a staggering £85,506 towards a flawed and misleading MORI opinion poll commissioned by a coalition of wealthy pro-vivisection organisations. The BUAV has submitted a formal complaint about this poll to the Market Research Society, as it feels that its leading questions have breached polling industry guidelines. The government is now deaf to the suffering of animals in the laboratory, their cries drowned out
by government support for the economic interests of the industry. Dare we
hope that they will listen to the professionals who care for the nation's
health and lives?"

The Home Office recently admitted in response to a Parliamentary question
that,  “The Home Office has not commissioned or evaluated any formal research on the efficacy of animal experiments” and “The Government has no plans to do
so.”

The current system of licensing for animal experiments requires the Home
Office to apply a 'cost:benefit' test - under which the likely animal
suffering has to be weighed against the anticipated benefit. The BUAV claims
that this is impossible without a proper evaluation of the efficacy of
experiments and challenges the government to review its decision. Until it
does, the government is agreeing to the suffering of millions of animals
each year for dubious and 'untested' purposes.

BUAV