Help the campaign to ban primate testing (From Gazette)

Help the campaign to ban primate testing

11:02am Friday 21st August 2009 in Letters

I urge compassionate readers to support a oncein- a-generation opportunity to ease the suffering of thousands of lab animals, and demand their MEP backs changes to the laws on animal testing across Europe.

Historic measures to save primates are within reach. MEPs are debating bringing in a timetable to end all primate testing, and a ban on experiments using wild-caught monkeys and our closest relatives – great apes.

Tests on primates differ from human results around a third of the time. This was demonstrated in the TGN1412 case where human volunteers suffered terrible, almost fatal, side effects to a drug that had been safely given to lab monkeys in doses 500 times that given to the volunteers.

Yet alternatives to animal testing like human microdosing techniques are accurate around 80 per cent of the time.

MEPs are in a position to actually challenge this as the norm. The ADI/NAVS Save the Primates investigative video shows the reality of monkeys captured from the wild, their horrific conditions at a UK-approved primate supplier in Asia, and finally their abysmal lives at a testing facility in England. These are the weeks in the which the fate of lab primates will be decided.

Visit www.savetheprimates .org to find out how you can help.

Jan Creamer
Chief executive
NAVS/ADI
Millbank
London