@Mark, No it was actually directed at Tim (who said "idealism instead of facts"). The new commenting system makes this stuff much harder to follow.

Hi Milica
While we did not find research applications submitted to animal ethics committees, we did manage to find one annual AEC report from Latrobe University, available online at http://www.latrobe.edu.au/quality/quality-documents/AQC-agenda-part-2-8-June-2011.pdf.
Animal use returns in this report indicate neither the number of animals used in projects nor the number of animals killed. In contrast to the Human Ethics Committee reports included in the same document, not even the names of the animal research projects are listed.
Instead, the project purpose is described in broad terms such as “environmental objectives”, “educational objectives” or “understand human/animal biology”. Similarly, project benefits are explained in vague terms, such as “fundamental biology/physiology” or “diseases- human”.
For each license held, the question is asked what the relevant school’s recent major achievement in regard to the 3Rs is. Of the six license nominees at La Trobe University, all responded to this question with the same words, though one added two examples to the standard text:
“It is a prerequisite for all applicants to address the 3Rs as part of their AEC application and for the AEC to specifically review these parts of the application. This process resulted in the identification of a number of improvements for animal welfare and usage through replacement, reduction and refinement. Further, experimenters were provided with information material about the 3Rs throughout 2010, and University personnel attended conferences and workshops on these topics.”
These are weasel words that pay only lip service to the Code’s requirement to replace animals, and reduce and refine their use.
This annual AEC report does not describe the ethical assessments either, the weighing up of harm and benefit that led to approval or rejection, nor the detail of the harm and benefit. That information exists only in project applications, AEC reports and minutes which are closed to the public.

Hi Monika, the attachment you link to appears to be similar (not the same) as forms I filled out several years ago where the animal use was in a separate document.

Hi Darren, no I haven't been on an AEC. With my views on animal research, I doubt any university or research institute would welcome me on their AEC.

No Darren, I have not. As you would have read in the article, however, we do have the written testimony of some who have. I have also spoken to some former Category C members. The picture is fairly uniform : the expectation that the protocol will be approved before discussion even begins, the high-handed and often arrogant attitude of the scientists involved and the general failure do ethical assessments as required by the Code.

From the publication:

2.1. Experimental protocol

Nine anaesthetised (isoflurane) and ventilated lambs were manually grasped under the axilla and vigorously shaken with sufficient force to snap the head back and forth onto the chest, similar to head motions believed to occur in human NAHI. In addition to this acceleration/deceleration of the head, there was also considerable lateral and rotational head movement. Each lamb was shaken in this manner 10 times of 30 seconds duration over a 30 minute period, then placed quietly in the sphinx position for six hours under anaesthesia. No head impact occurred. Four control lambs were not shaken, but otherwise subjected to the same experimental protocol. In addition to being ventilated, animals were titrated against regular blood gas measurements to maintain a normal blood gas profile, and mean arterial blood pressure was measured from a fluid-filled, arterial catheter inserted into the right femoral artery.

During the experiment, a subset of three lower body weight lambs (mean 5.5 kg, range 5.0–6.0 kg) died unexpectedly at two, three and five hours after the last episode of shaking, without reaching the designated six-hour post-shaking period. By contrast, the higher body weight lambs (mean 10.3 kg, range 8.5–12.0 kg) survived for six hours post-shaking, until killed by perfusion fixation of the brain (Table 1).

Shake a lambs head long and hard enough and it will probably die!

The pathological and biomechanical aspects of this paediatric disorder remain controversial and intermittently undergo revision.17 Mechanisms of brain injury may also vary between individual NAHI cases,18 a reliable history of the precise circumstances surrounding the abuse is usually lacking,19 and any wrongdoing is frequently denied by the perpetrator. The absence of any external evidence of head trauma also does not necessarily negate a diagnosis of NAHI for, if the head is impacted against a soft surface, substantial brain damage may still be sustained from rapid angular deceleration of the head. Furthermore, since the lesions found in NAHI are not pathognomonic for inflicted head trauma, a pathological diagnosis of NAHI should be concluded with caution, unless there is other corroborating evidence of abuse or a convincing admission by the perpetrator.4

This "evidence" will never be decisive!

If you can't see this experiment was an abomination, cruel and unnecessary, then you are just blind or emotionally dead.

So, Rob, you agree then that the Humane Research Australia website distorts the paper.

Hi David, I can't think of a situation where animal research is required.
I've previously written an article for the Conversation "Animal research provides a flawed model, so why not stop?" https://theconversation.edu.au/animal-research-provides-a-flawed-model-so-why-not-stop-7890 That pretty much sums up my view.

David, there are no doubt situations where I would regard animal research as justified, necessary, essential , causing minimum pain and suffering and therefore ethical. I think most addiction studies do not meet these criteria but there will be some other neurological studies that do. The point, however, is that by the above standard - which is supposedly enshrined in the Code of Practice - a great deal of current experimentation would be ruled out and should never have passed ethical approval..

It seems in this debate, we always seem to get to the polarised positions of using no animals at all or continue as we are, using an increasing number of animals in the millions and doing some pretty horrible things to them. There is a middle position and that is what the article advocates. The level and nature of experimentation in Australia has gone beyond in our view reasonable and justifiable limits. It has to be scaled back, and transparency about what goes on behind the lab door and in AEC meetings is the best way to achieve this.

As you can see Monika have different opinions on this, but the point of view in our article is not abolitionist. It as, as I say below, the view that much animal research is unethical and has to stop.

Thank you for your response Monika and Rob.
Monika your statement "I can't think of a situation where animal research is required" appears to suggest an ideological position and you are free to hold it.
Rob
I understand your point and you seem ok with some animal research in some cases. So we both agree that animal research is necessary and that has to fall within certain guidelines, what we are disagreeing with is where to draw the line. I think that understanding the mechanism of addiction (to drugs, or food, or other behaviors) and understanding whether a baby with head trauma could be due to normal activity (in which case we could warn parents against it, such as with the way a baby should sleep which has helped to reduce SIDS deaths) or if it is due to abuse are things work examining but you don't. As you say it is all about the grey areas.

That is about the size of it.
However, I don't say these things - e.g. addiction mechanisms and head trauma - are not "worth" examining, but that we are not justified in using animals the way we have done in most instances to examine them. There is a difference. There are many things that it would be useful and profitable to discover, and we could do so by experimentation on animals or humans. There is further question of whether it is ethical and should be allowed
Too often the scenario seems to be that the researcher comes to the AEC with a protocol involving animal use that can't, it is claimed, be done without animals. Some benefit or potential benefit is argued. The researcher makes guarantees that pain and suffering will be minimized as much as possible relative to the project's objectives. Death may occur but it will be as painless as possible. At that point, the ethical question dissolves.. The protocol is already regarded as justified and anyone (say the Cat C member) who objects, can do little more than ask for more refinement (pain reduction). This is not ethical assessment.

David,

it may be as you say be all about the grey areas but I think history has shown that more and more areas of animal experimentation are turning black ie. forbidden. In Descartes times, physicians nailed dogs by their paws to the dissecting table and cut them open fully conscious without any anaesthetic. In the sixties, researchers did abominable things, such as keeping animals in tiny boxes exposed to extreme heat to see what happened to their brains. (Singer's Animal Liberation is full of such horrors). Testing animals with household products ( dishwashing liquid, fly spray, floor polish) is still common in many parts of the world. In Australia, we have slowly rubbed out these practices (mainly as a result of pressure from animal welfare groups). More needs to be done, more types of experimentation need to stop. I am sure in 10 years time most people will look back on that lamb shaking experiment and other studies mentioned and wonder how they could ever have happened, just as we now look back in dismay at the abuses of the past.

Helen Marston, These new facilities are great and will be utilised but still don't come close to allowing the sort of work that is currently being done. I know of work which is being done (in animals) that is looking to develop new technologies and treatments to reduce the effects of stroke, things like impairment, physical and mental, paralysis, death etc). This sort of work can't be done passively. Interestingly a lot of work done with imaging is also done in conjunction with animal research.

Helen wrote: "The genetically modified Alzheimer mouse models have been a huge disappointment to the pharmaceutical industry, which has significantly cut back on its investment in this area of animal testing."

Ironically, the Alzhemier mouse was developed based on our understanding of **human** disease, using key proteins everyone flagged in humans. If anything, it has clarified some important issues in AD progression.

AD drug research is being cut back because **nothing** we have tried works, whether based on animal models, human disease understanding or on tissue culture. This is not a failing of animal models, this is a failing to understand something fundamental about the disease.
https://theconversation.edu.au/new-very-distant-hope-for-treating-alzheimers-10597

I am uncertain as to why you think gathering the evidence that will prevent innocent people from being charged with manslaughter (or conversely, allowing manslaughter to be detected that would otherwise be missed) is a waste.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967586812001014

Ian,

let's remind ourselves of what is justified in the use of animals under the Code of Practice.

The relevant section is:

JUSTIFICATION 1.1 Scientific and teaching activities using animals may be peformed only when they are essential:
• to obtain and establish significant infomation relevant to the understanding of humans and/or animals;
• for the maintenance and improvement of human and/or animal health and welfare;
• for the improvement of animal management or production;
• to obtain and establish significant infomation relevant to the understanding, maintenance or improvement of the natural environment; or
• for the achievement of educational objectives.

Most people will see how shockingly weak this is. "For the achievement of educational objectives"? That could licence almost anything. But even so, under what criteria of the above would "preventing innocent people from being charged with manslaughter " come? Would it be "for the improvement of human welfare?" Or for "the understanding of humans"?

I am asking you but of course you don't know how the AEC came to the conclusion that the lamb shaking experiment was justified according to the code and the reasons they gave as they are obliged to. The point is that no one knows, except the people on that committee who can't talk about it. This is why there needs to be more disclosure. The public has a right to be informed

Ian wrote "I cannot even begin to understand the confusion of mind that would produce that sentence. Did you really mean to write that?"

Ian, you are becoming a little personal here as is your tendency. I suppose you mean that it is just obvious that the experiment would be justified under the Code's criteria of "maintenance and improvement of human health and welfare". Well, I'm not at all sure that the intention of that clause covers legal/forensic questions - "welfare" in this case is too liberally interpreted..If this is right, then given the impact on the animals involved, I am believe the AEC concerned made an error in deeming this experiment justified under the Code.

Ian, what about this paper two years before in the same journal. Exactly the same shaking experiment done!

Journal of Clinical Neuroscience 17 (2010) 237–240

Diffuse neuronal perikaryal amyloid precursor protein immunoreactivity in an ovine model of non-accidental head injury (the shaken baby syndrome)
John W. Finnie, Jim Manavis, Peter C. Blumbergs *

I am still unconvinced that before this study it was not known whether shaking a baby’s head alone could cause its death without any additional head trauma “required”. Isn’t that just silly? If you shake a baby’s head long and hard enough of course it will die, just as if you shake a grown man’s head long and hard enough, he will also die. Without a limit on intensity and duration, no experiment is needed to establish this result – we have enough medical knowledge and experience of broken necks, for example, to know the outcome . In that case, the research must be trying to replicate an “average” intensity of shaking that is commonly seen in NAHI cases. In this experiment (and a previous one 2 years earlier!) the heads of 9 (7 in 2010) lambs were violently shaken for 10 periods of 30secs over 30 minutes. I do not see how this estimate of let say “average abuse” could have been made on any principled basis.

Even if we grant that this study shows that a particular baby death could have been caused by shaking lone, what great benefit is that? As the authors themselves note, “unless there is other corroborating evidence of abuse or a convincing admission by the perpetrator”, NAHI “should be concluded with caution” . How then will the results of this study will ever help convict (or acquit) someone of causing death by shaking, inflicting head trauma or both?

You don't have to be pathologist to know that if you shake a baby's head long and hard enough (with no limit on intensity and duration) it will die. Surely, with sufficient force (capable of being exerted by an average adult) its neck will break. That's what I wrote, that is what you apparently you did not read.

You say the finding of the study implies that "people cannot be convicted of deliberately causing head trauma on the basis of "shaken baby syndrome" alone". True before and after this study, if there is no corroborating evidence and no confession. Also, as the paper says "the lesions found in NAHI are not pathognomonic for inflicted head trauma".

Has there been a single case (before this paper) of a person being convicted of inflicting head trauma , without any corroborating evidence, and based solely on the reasoning alone that a baby with "shaken baby syndrome" died, and therefore there must have been head trauma? Of course not.

Rob wrote: "Surely, with sufficient force (capable of being exerted by an average adult) its neck will break."

That has nothing to do with "shaken baby syndrome", where death (when it occurs) is accompanied by a constellation of relatively subtle pathological changes in the brain and eyes.

If you do not understand this, then your comments on what should or should not be obvious to trained pathologists is irrelevant.

The shaking of lambs by researchers at Adelaide University did not help to prove shaken baby syndrome in a recent court case in the Melbourne Magistrates Court. Rather, a medical expert said that such experiments are of little value.

This is from The Age:

Royal Children's Hospital opthamologist Dr James Elder “… said he was aware that "shaken baby syndrome" was a controversial issue in medical circles.
There was a group of medical professionals who believed the concept was false but Dr Elder disagreed. He said there was ample evidence to prove the condition did exist.
Dr Elder said there was no precise data on the issue as shaking a rat or a one-day old pig in medical experiments was not the same as a human infant. He did not know if any tests had been carried out on primates.
Cross-examined by Robert Richter, QC, for Jenkins, Dr Elder agreed he did not know exactly what had happened to Chloe.
Mr Richter said the opthamologist had concluded Chloe had been shaken without knowing how her injuries were sustained or whether or not it was an accident.
He said Dr Elder did not have the slightest idea if Chloe may have accidentally fallen on her head. Dr Elder agreed.”

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/chloe-may-have-been-dropped-or-thrown-20121127-2a4wv.html

Hi Gillian, Emotive language aside, you put forward an ethical argument but have over simplified the biological argument. Use of animal models have their shortcomings but to use humans, "who are not fully human" ("mentally retarded persons whose cognitive and social capacities, human infants, the senile, the comatose, and the cognitively disabled, orphaned infants that are severely cognitively disabled" etc) would also be less than optimal because, for example the mapping of brain circuitry, the findings could not be applicable to the wider population as each of the groups of humans you have described are not only different from the average person but also from each other.

Hi Dave, yes other ex-members of AECs have given similar accounts. (Some papers are referenced in our article).
Sidelining of cat c and Cat D members may be common, but the legal situation is clear. Every use of animals in Australia for scientific/medical purposes must be subject to approval by an Animal Ethics Committee. All such use must also be in accord with the Code of Practice for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes. No AEC,no compliance and an institution, should, by the Cruelty to Animal Regulation in Victoria at least, lose its Scientific Premises licence and will not be legally permitted thereafter to undertake research involving the use of animals. Cat C and Cat D being freely able to contribute and reject protocols if they so wish is also part of the code and if this is not happening, an institution is not compliant.
Has an institution ever lost its licence because of malfunctioning AECs? We could not find any evidence that one has. Institutions are very good at covering things up in this regard and essentially regulate themselves (apart from the licence provisions). Yet another reason there needs to be more public disclosure and transparency.

Rats and mice are pretty predictive in terms of cardiovacular disease and antibiotics (with the exclusion of Leprosy, which only infects armadillos as well as humans [no, that's not a joke])

Here's a short list of some major therapeutic developments from animal experimentation, sulphonamide antibiotics, discovered using animal experiments, the entire **class** of antihypertensive diuretics discovered from side effects on animals (and developed to therapeutics through animal experiments), the **entire class** of sulphonyl ureas, important for managing type II diabetes, discovered from animal experiments (and developed to therapeutics through animal experiments). The Angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (in part responsible for the massive fall in death from cardiac disease) developed to therapeutics through animal experiments (and understanding the entire renin-angiotensin system depended on animal experiments), as were the angiotensin receptor blockers. Imantinib, which produces a better than 80% remission rate in chronic myeloid leukeamia, developed using animal experiments. The discovery of endothelin, which lead to the first reasonably effective therapy for pulmonary hypertension, animal experiments.

There's more examples, so while animal models for CNS effects are pretty useless (as an example), there's many where they have been essential for a whole range of important therapeutic advances.

Yes, the new commenting system is double plus ungood.

But the whole "animal testing delayed penicillin" thing is a myth see here (you will have to manually scroll down, the hyperlink to the first item doesn't work)
http://speakingofresearch.com/extremism-undone/bad-science/#1
And here
http://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/how/myths-and-facts
and where would we be without some Respectful Insolence
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/03/17/bad-scientific-arguments-in-the-service/

In the three points, I was summarizing a position not presenting the argument for them. The support comes from the literature, but in those terms I was primarily thinking of the discussion here (posts by Patrick, Helen, Cat and Gillian and their references ).

You say my first point is just a subjective value judgement. You really can’t put down a claim by calling it a “subjective value judgement’ without argument. You seem to think that any value judgement is subjective and is as good as any other. Moral claims are not the same as preferences or tastes . Someone saying that theft is wrong is just not the same sort of assertion as saying they like banana ice cream. You would learn this distinction in Ethics 101.

As Patrick commented, your point about arable farming is, well, beside the point if you see it as an objection to my claim that much animal experimentation trades significant animal interests for less significant human ones. Of course, there are other practices such as pest control and factory farming where significant animal interests are also traded for less significant human ones and I have serious concerns about them. Are you saying you can’t object to one thing without objecting to a lot of other things which would be judged wrong by the same criterion in the same breath? Or do you suspect I am a vegetarian and so guilty of inconsistency? Or is it an attempt at reductio, namely that because my view implies "every human alive is guilty of some grand sin” (which is just hyperbole, of course) then my view can’t be right? On the latter point, I think it is perfectly possible to live a life that is minimally connected to any unethical treatment or use of animals.

There is an issue of the degree of moral culpability that depends on one’s distance from the wrong. The “sin” as you call it, committed by someone munching on their sandwich made from bread that came from a wheat crop that was subject to pest control – and so saw the suffering and death of many animals - is somewhat less in my opinion than the sin of the experimenter sewing the eyelids of a newly born kitten together in a lazy eye study and also less than the acts of researchers in a host of other studies where there is a direct intention to cause harm.

On the question of alternatives to animals in research and the unwillingness of scientists in many instances to consider them, it appears you have not read that literature either nor followed some of the posts to this discussion.

I agree and as I said in the article little or no value is attached to animals' lives either by the Code of Practice or by the practitioners of animal testing (otherwisethey probably would not be doing most of what they are doing!)

On the rights view and Singer's utilitarianism (at least in Singer's view) killing animals for our ends is not justified. Both Reagan and Singer argue the case for mammals greater than one year of age, but are prepared to extend the benefit of the doubt (i.e. whether a creature is the subject-of-a-life with a sense of the future ) to many other other orders of animals e.g. reptiles, birds and amphibians. Perhaps oysters and most insects would not be given the benefit of the doubt.

On this subject , I can't recommend too highly John Hadley's article What a Pain: the Ethics of Killing Animals Humanely
https://theconversation.edu.au/what-a-pain-the-ethics-of-killing-animals-humanely-1751

It has been sadly neglected by the readership to judge by the number of comments (4).

Hadley raises some very interesting points, particularly that if we are we are against causing an animal pain and suffering then there is an argument that we can't in all consistency think it is all right to painlessly take its life. In John's words " if the life that suffering impacts upon is worth being pain free, then it must be valuable for its own sake". If an animal's life is valuable, then our taking it, raises an ethical issue.

My own view is that the lives of many kinds of animals are valuable (and not just valuable for our purposes) and in general should not be taken without extremely good reasons (self-defence and mercy killing would be two situations) . If such a moral position were to become part of the Code of Practice, a great deal of experimentation would, of course, be disallowed. One can hope that this is the path reform will take.

The simple answer is that the direct intention of much animal experimentation is to harm healthy animals. No other use of animals in our society has that intention, even though much harm does come to animals indirectly in factory framing, horse racing and the like.
That is why why even though in terms of numbers of animals affected experimentation is towards the bottom of the scale, many have argued that it is the most heinous, morally problematic of all our uses of animals.

Donna, I have read all of your comments to the article with interest. As one of the authors, I was hoping that there would be more responses from those who have served on AECs or like you, have had a position within the AEC system. Unfortunately, that has not happened and it's not clear whether it’s the confidentiality issue or that people just don't want to comment for other reasons.

I understand the point you make that “it is very difficult for the layperson to participate on an AEC if they do not have a scientific background”. We should be clear, however, that although this may be the practical reality, it is contra to the requirements of the Code of Practice under which AECs operate ( and under which, the institution could theoretically lose its licence to conduct animal experimentation).

Cat C and Cat D members are on AECs to represent the animal welfare point of view and the community point of view respectively. If those members do not understand the science of a proposal, then it is mandated that it must be explained in terms they understand.
To quote the relevant section of the Code:
Proposals 2.2.15
It is important that all AEC members are provided with sufficient information to participate in the assessment of proposals. This can only be achieved by the use of plain English in the proposal. Applicants must ensure that where the use of scientific language is deemed unavoidable, it is supported by a suitable lay description or a glossary of terms

Plain English means plain English and the onus is on the applicant to present their proposals in this way . I am very sceptical of those who say this is impossible. Most science (apart from say quantum theory) can be explained in terms general enough for a layperson to understand, particularly when the focus is on benefit and alternatives.

Although I not saying you are guilty of this, I think it is very clear that that “Cat C and Cat D members do not understand the science” argument is being dishonestly used by some researchers to belittle attempts to question, let alone reject proposals, and to further their own interests in getting their projects approved. It is also being dishonestly used as an argument as to why the public should not have more information about what is being done to animals in research labs and why it is being done. The comments by Professor McCluskey from Melbourne in The Age a week ago are a recent example of this kind of claim http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/the-monkey-farm-primates-being-bred-for-experiments-20121124-2a0gz.html. (The Professor does not seem reliable. According to The Age, he appoints animal ethics committee members but does not know whether those members are required to sign confidentiality agreements!)

An equally serious issue for me is that the concentration on the scientific detail in AECS meetings is obscuring the ethical question of using animals in a particular study, which is what the AEC is primarily there to consider. If AECS were doing proper ethical assessments there would be a number of cases out of the thousands of proposals where Cat C and Cat D members failed to approve. That is there would be cases where those members understood the science sufficiently to understand what the benefit, or supposed benefit was (usually “to obtain and establish significant information relevant to the understanding of humans”) but were not satisfied that this benefit (often minor rather than significant, often very uncertain) justified the impact in terms of pain, suffering and death of the animals involved. There have been hardly any such cases in Australia, as you report yourself and others have reported (c.f. the Denise Russell paper referred to in our article)

Confidentiality restrictions on AEC members are often justified by claiming there are intellectual property and commercially sensitive considerations to be taken into account to protect the research in question. If the research is already published, then that can’t be a reason that the public should not access the decision making process that led to the research being approved in the first place. Take the lamb shaking case. The experiment was an abomination in many people’s view (including my own) that should never have happened – cruel, unnecessary and not very useful. Others disagree, saying the results of the experiment could save a person being wrongly convicted or wrongly acquitted in a “shaken-baby syndrome” case. The relevant paper was published this year. Methods and results are in the public domain – there is nothing to steal. But we still can’t see the AEC records of the meetings that approved this experiment. For such a controversial case (and many more like it) the public has the right to see the records to be assured a proper ethical assessment was done, alternatives were thoroughly explored, the benefits of the experiments were not overstated and that the Cat C an Cat D members were independent and put forward the views they are on the AEC to represent. I find it incredible that a Cat C member, a person, independent of the institution, with a commitment to animal welfare who was properly informed, approved the experiment. Many others do to. The system should allow us to find out what went on in that AEC.

In one of your comments, you mentioned that some researchers and animal house staff feel vulnerable to threats from animal rights protesters. So in the sense of identifying these individuals , more transparency and disclosure seems unwise. Do you think that if, as we advocate in the article, there were more public access to the ethical assessments of AECs, committee members would similarly feel vulnerable? This is an interesting point from a number of perspectives. In quite a few cases (as we say in the article) we were able to get hold of the membership of an AEC (the names and category) but not of course the decisions or records of meetings. The information about the people then is already available in many cases. I suspect if more was known about how AECs reach their decisions there would certainly be some anger directed at them , but more as to how they are run, how they fail to do what they are required to do by the Code and that Cat C and Cat D views are not adequately represented. In other words, the anger and demands for reform would be directed at the system, not the individuals involved.

How do you feel about not being able to speak more freely about your experiences on the AEC? What could happen to you if you were found to have breached your confidentiality agreement?

As I have pointed out before, the whole "animal testing delayed penicillin" thing is a myth see here (you will have to manually scroll down, the hyperlink to the first item doesn't work)
http://speakingofresearch.com/extremism-undone/bad-science/#1
And here
http://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk/how/myths-and-facts
and where would we be without some Respectful Insolence
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/03/17/bad-scientific-arguments-in-the-service/

The first of Ian's references is to "Speaking of Research" , a pro-vivisection website ( I don't normally use this term but they call their opponents anti-vivisectionists, so I am perhaps entitled).
For that reason, I would be skeptical of some claims made there. I am not, however, qualified to comment on the science of the penicillin studies, so I leave that to others. It is obvious, though, that the material on that site does not address many of the points made by Douglas. Perhaps Ian would be good enough to have a go at that by himself and explode the "myth", as he calls it, in his own words?

The ignorance of ethical theory on that site is in evidence at http://speakingofresearch.com/extremism-undone/ar-beliefs/. I do feel qualified to comment on that.

The second link is to a blog, called "Respectful Ignorance". I could not find penicillin mentioned anywhere. There was an ad for Free Electricity , which I should follow up.

Rob: I just had a quick look at that page you linked to - bloody hell, that is one of the most theoretically naive discussions of ethics I've ever seen in my life. Just woeful. Dismisses Bentham without understanding a word of it and then simply asserts a rights-based contractarianism as if it's so obvious nothing further needs to be said.

Whatever side of the debate we might come down on, that is a simply atrocious basis upon which to base one's views.

Patrick, yes exactly. I imagine the influence is Carl Cohen, the darling of the experimentation community. In its eyes, Cohen has "proved" animals do not and cannot have rights. You'll never read a philosopher as rude and dismissive as he is in some of his exchanges with Regan.

I also find it interesting that he's taking a utilitarian (i.e. Bentham) to task for not grounding a theory of 'rights'; I'm not a utilitarian but one strength I think it does have is precisely that it *doesn't* try to cram normativity into a rights-based framework. (Singer, for instance, has argued that 'rights' is basically just a form of shorthand for picking out ranges of undesirable actions, so "we have a right to free speech" is a compressed way of saying "not interfering in people's speech will tend to produce utility-maximising outcomes"). It doesn't even seem to occur to this person that morality might not be a matter of 'rights' exclusively, so the whole thing about rights proceeding from mutual agreements that animals cannot form is moot.

Patrick, some peculiar arguments here too http://pro-test.org.uk/facts.php?lt=a (linked from the other page)
where the naive view about rights gets the author into real trouble:

" Animals are incapable of assessing their own beliefs and actions and so cannot meaningfully either give their consent to be killed or to deny it. The argument that its inability to give consent does not mean that it is not entitled to a right to life is flawed, to follow it to the extreme would result in the granting of rights to plants, bacteria and any living organism as well as inanimate objects- after all a blade of grass or a rock cannot give or deny consent yet it would be bizarre to argue that they had any entitlement to rights. The right to life must be based on whether an organism is capable of making a meaningful reflection on whether it should live or die and then giving or denying consent."
Giving consent to be killed? Eh? Also, the non sequiter beginning "The argument that its inability to give consent does not mean.." is breathtaking.

Perhaps we could do a paper unpicking some of this nonsense.