About Us

VERO is a University-based group established to oppose the University's construction of a new animal research laboratory, and to campaign for a more ethically responsible approach to biomedical research at Oxford. Founded in the summer of 2006, it unites academic and administrative staff, students and graduates from a variety of disciplines. VERO is emphatically in favour of medical progress, but believes that the ethical principles underpinning it should be agreed upon by society as a whole, and continually reviewed and tested through open and informed public debate.

VERO is committed to peaceful, lawful campaigning, and to defending the tradition of intellectual freedom which has allowed enlightened, humane thought to flourish at Oxford through the ages.

Why A New Group?

Controversy over the new animal laboratory at Oxford has become caught up in questions of law and order. Opponents of the laboratory can feel intimidated and deterred by the complex injunctions and aggressive policing; the University feels beleaguered, suspects its critics of unlawful intentions, and concentrates upon its security. In this situation, little progress can be made. There is a clear need for an anti-vivisection group which the University believes it can trust and work with. Such a group can promote awareness of the real issues among University people, and try to persuade the University's scientists and other leaders to change their attitudes and practices.

Mission Statement

As members of the University, we strongly object to the University's construction of a new animal research laboratory, and to the huge investment in vivisection which this implies. We object on both ethical and scientific grounds.

The ethics: research using animals can cause them considerable pain and stress, lasting harm, and premature death. It bases humanity's honourable search for better health on cruelty and exploitation.

The science: the relevance of animal results to human physiology is always questionable and has been habitually exaggerated by researchers and others who have an interest in doing so. UK law requires that no such research should be done where there is a valid alternative approach which does not involve animals, but scientists and fund-providers have mostly shown little readiness to look for and develop these alternatives.

We therefore call on Oxford University to comply more actively with the spirit of the law, to re-direct its funds and talents away from vivisection and into human-based research, and so to set an example of excellence in this as in so many other areas of enlightened and progressive thought.