Animal rights and wrongs

But for scientists on the other side of the cage, the beagle is an unfortunate but necessary victim on the road to overcoming diseases which have killed millions of people and blighted the lives of others.

Since the bombing campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s aimed at scientists and laboratory workers, direct action has become less frequent as campaigners concentrated on peaceful protest.

But now hostilities have resumed with a vengeance, with letter bomb campaigns blamed on animal rights extremists, hate mail and telephone threats to companies investing in research establishments and individual share-holders exposed to their neighbours.

"We have seen a resurgence in more upfront and more militant campaigning," says Wendy Higgins, campaigns director for the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection.

"There is a real frustration at the lack of activity on the part of this Government. It gave the impression it was going to be animal friendly and we were going to see a massive improvement in a number of areas.

"It has introduced a ban on cosmetics testing and the use of Great Apes, but these are not really the heart of the issue."

The BUAV stresses its commitment to peaceful protest and its opposition to violence, but is unequivocal in its opposition to animal testing.

"We don't believe it can ever be justified to cause animal suffering in a laboratory," says Ms Higgins. "We don't agree that animal experiments can ever guarantee valid results.

"The BUAV wants to see medical progress - we have all had members of our family who have been affected by heart disease or diabetes or cancer - but we simply don't believe this myth that animal experiments are the answer."

Anti-vivisectionists point to a series of drugs which went through extensive tests on animals but were later found to be harmful to people.

Anti-arthritis drug Opren is one of the most renowned. Tests on rats and monkeys failed to reveal the liver damage and skin reactions it would cause in humans and it was withdrawn in the UK after more than 3,500 reports of side-effects, including 61 deaths.

The BUAV also points to alternatives to testing on animals, including using computer modelling and skin cultures grown in laboratories, as not only less offensive, but also more effective.

"We want medical research that is reliable but you can't ever rely on animal testing," says Ms Higgins.

"The alternatives are there but there is a real lack of commitment from the scientific community and the Government to transfer to other methods. Animal testing is cheaper."

About 2.5m animals are used in scientific experiments every year, with about 80 per cent of them rats and mice, which have the advantages of being cheap, taking up little space and having a rapid rate of reproduction.

Scientists involved in animal experiments realise they have to overcome the image of the cute, defenceless beagle if they are to make their case, but they insist there is no alternative if medical advances are to be made.

"If there was no need then nobody would do them," says Barbara Davies, deputy director of the Research Defence Society. "Particularly as scientists get targeted by some quite aggressive campaigns.

"Animals are only used when we need to look at what happens in the whole, living body. The living body is so complicated so when we want to study the whole system we have to use the whole animal.

"Animal use is kept to an absolute minimum, we are not allowed to use an animal if there is an alternative."

The RDS was set up to represent scientists and doctors involved in animal research, in the face of growing extremism from campaigners, and now has about 6,000 members. But while they are conscious of the drugs which were approved following animal testing and later found to have serious side-effects, this does not cast a shadow over their work.

"Other mammals are very similar to human beings," says Barbara Davies. "And where we know about the differences we can usually take account of them. But nobody is saying they are exactly the same and nobody is saying it is perfect."

She points to Thalidomide, the drug used to treat morning sickness but later found to cause serious birth defects, as an example of how animal testing has developed. When the drug was introduced, there was no requirement to test on pregnant animals, a short-coming which has now been rectified.

"All you have to do is think of any major medical advance of the last 100 years to see the benefit of animal testing," she says. "Antibiotics, the polio vaccine, meningitis vaccines, insulin - animals were essential in developing all of these.

"Nobody wants to use animals but it is necessary if we want to make progress in medicine.

"The counter-point to that appealing dog is a child who has been vaccinated against various horrible diseases."

But for David Cooper, professor of philosophy at Durham University, the benefits in medical advances do not outweigh the suffering of animals.

"The idea that all these animals are nobly dying in the cause of cancer research is wrong," he says.

"There are many alternative forms of research available and one of the main reasons these are not used is economic. A lot of these animals are dying because we're not willing to spend a bit more on hair sprays and laxative pills."

He says much of our knowledge about hypothermia is based on research undertaken on concentration camp victims who were thrown into freezing water.

"A lot of people have benefited from that but many of us would agree that the end doesn't justify the means," he says.

"There are lots of people who can't see that the lives of animals have anything like the value of human lives. There are many other people, including me, who are unable to share that perception.

"Even if these practices have medical benefits, it seems to me they remain wrong, for the same reason as it was wrong to chuck those concentration camp inmates into freezing water."

Newcastle University's medical research department is one of the largest centres for animal research in the North-East and scientists there are acutely aware of the threat from extremists.

Few are willing to speak openly, but a university spokesman said they were confident of the value of their work.

"We use animals reluctantly, because it is the only way to get the information we need," he says.

"About 90 per cent of medical research involves tissue cultures, computer simulation, studies on patients and human volunteers. Less than ten per cent involves animals."

But whether that beagle is a cute victim of a cruel system or necessary sacrifice in the name of progress, may depend on how you see animals.

"When you think that, last year, we used two and a half million animals in research, we kill and eat six million a year and probably about five million pets die a year," says the university spokesman.

"And when you think of the benefits we are getting from those two and a half million animals in terms of medical progress, it is a balancing act - which is more important, people or animals? We think animals are important but the bottom line is that people actually matter more."