The 3 Stooges

Oxford University - the attempts to build the animal lab reveal two opposing sides: Animal lovers trying desperately to prevent it from being built, while scientists explain that the animal work that will be carried out there will enable cutting edge science to progress. The animal rights argument is over emotional and relies on animals being given the same status as humans – our emotions and needs. The pro-lab lobby is endorsed by some of the country’s most respected scientists.

A quick glance at the situation may imply that this is the case – and much of the media have done no more than have a quick cursory glance before forming an opinion. Most of the above can be dismantled easily, but perhaps the most striking misinformation is the integrity of some of the faces behind the animal lab. Three in particular stand out.

Colin Blakemore

As always, the vivisectionist position is taken up by Colin Blakemore. Blakemore has abused his position as a spokesman for a medical research body to defend only animal experiments. He has also practiced them, and it’s this preoccupation with vivisection which has prevented Mr. Blakemore from achieving anything worthwhile in his career.

Blakemore has been highlighted for his gruesome experiments sewing the eyelids together of newborn kittens. The grisly nature of his experiments give him the impression of being deliberately offensive and cruel, and his justification for doing the experiments appears to be the result of a desperate rummage through the textbooks to find something he could conceivably link to his macabre tests.

He’s tried to link it to amblyopia, which is deterioration in the way the eyes work together, and to strabismus – misalignment of the eyes (or squints). In both cases, his work has achieved nothing.

Blakemore claims that it was only through animal experiments that it was discovered whether amblyopia causes squints, or the other way round. He also claims the causes were unknown until experiments like his were conducted.¹ Perhaps he should have bought a book, because this question was answered in the 1800s and before that in the 1700s.²

Claims that this sort of research is even a reasonable suggestion are not practical. Animal experiments rely on taking recordings from single cells, which don’t show what the animal sees, or even if he can see.³ Animal experimenters have noted primate results being inconsistent with human experience, and blamed this on the method of causing blindness.⁴ His choice of cats as a model is bizarre – cats are not quoted in papers about human neuroanatomy.⁵

Experts have explained that “the morphologic and functional organization of the visual system in cats is substantially different from that in man.” ⁶and could haveadded that the human eye depends on the fovea and macula, which cats do not have.⁷

Blakemore’s career has been wasted apart from the fact that he now heads the Medical Research Council (MRC) – not bad for someone who failed at their chosen career. There has, according to experts in the field, been little added to our knowledge since the work by Claude Worth, who retired 50 years before Colin Blakemore started his pointless and cruel exercise.⁸

Roger Lemon

Roger Lemon is one of the more vocal supporters of vivisection who tries to give the impression that he is a respected researcher who cares for animals and works at the forefront of human neurology.

In the mid 1990s Lemon was working at the Institute of Neurology in Queens Square, London. His experiments involved macaques, and included reusing a macaque (which had been illegal until about 10 years previously) and repeating extremely invasive experiments on one macaque.

The experiments themselves were easy to criticise: brain mapping can never be applied to humans because of the difference in areas that humans and macaques have – such as language, and the fact that the brains are different.⁹ But what set Lemon apart from his public image was the complete disregard Lemon had even for the rudimentary welfare conditions described by the legislation.

One of Lemon’s ‘projects’ was Mary, a pig-tailed macaque. She had electrodes permanently held in her head by a steel plate bolted through her skull. She was starved for a day before being made to perform a lever squeezing task for food rewards so readings could be taken from her brain. Mary lived almost all her life in a tiny cage roughly the length of her body. She had no privacy, bedding, toys, stimulation (apart from the experiments) or exercise. She was constantly defensive and fearful, trying to be aggressive to anyone who came into the room.

In the same room was a rhesus macaque. She had been rejected from group cages at Shamrock (a primate supplier, now closed) and her skin was lacking any hair. She was supposed to be company for Mary but they were different species that didn’t naturally interact. Also, the deprivation had driven her to extreme mental illness. She paced the wire floor of her cage in circles with a roll of her head on the same part of each circuit.

What Lemon didn’t know was that one of his team of animal technicians was not a fan of his work. He was photographing, filming and recording events and building up evidence of the misconduct. Later the film footage was shown on prime time BBC1 and released to the media. The misconduct had gone on for months, and probably for years before the record keeping began. Only then had he been exposed.

Tipu Aziz

A dream ambassador for Oxford University - a pioneer who has developed a technique which had saved many humans from endless suffering. They claim they have this in Tipu Aziz.

Claims have been made, especially by Mr. Aziz himself, that he discovered Deep Brain Stimulation, a technique which enables sufferers of Parkinson’s disease to control their life-destroying tremors using a remote control box which activates electrodes permanently fixed in their brain.

That’s the claim – here’s the reality. The first person to use it was Dr Bernabid, a French neurologist. He used electrodes to excite neuron activity in order to help him perform accurate surgery in his patients. By chance he used the wrong setting and found that this calmed the neurons. He thought this might prevent tremors, and was eventually forced to prove his theory when a patient couldn’t be operated on using existing techniques. He developed the technique, not Aziz.¹⁰

The Oxford lab is supported enthusiastically by these three, and the unquestioning among us accept the claim that they’re incisive researchers. All three have got their share of skeletons in the cupboard. Ironically, all three would probably have had a chance to make a real contribution to medical science and to gain a reputation worth having if they hadn’t been drawn into animal experimentation and played their part in wasting resources, misleading medical knowledge and perpetuating the system.

‘Waste’ is perhaps the key theme in this case, as although many supporters of the lab do have a background in science, it doesn’t necessarily mean that their motivation is to improve scientific research. On the contrary, many may have other motivations.

They may be closely affiliated to an organisation that profits from vivisection. This may be an animal lab, drug company or other body, and this affiliation may be the reason they’re prepared to speak out. The waste of resources that vivisection presents may not be a drawback for them. It may mean that their area of research remains one they can perform animal experiments in for endless years to come. It may mean that the animal lab presents them, or their funders or employers with ample opportunity to commission inaccurate work, the results of which can easily be twisted and misrepresented to support an argument in support of, or against a product or treatment, as suits them.

Science, like many things, can – and frequently is – bought.

Oxford University claim they’ve got the leading medical minds in the country supporting their lab. If the best they can do is come up with these three discredited individuals, their support must be limited. It’s often not what you know but who you know and in the case of Oxford University, they know allot of people but obviously not enough people of sound scientific standing. Otherwise, why come up with these three?

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