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Press
Church Times 8 September 2006, p.13
The sacrifice of animals to save human lives
Dr Martin Henig
Sir, - The big debate in Oxford University over the past year has been concerned not with church matters but with the building of an “Animal House”, to house and breed animals for medical research.
While, no doubt, many Christians will have personal views concerning the subject, it is unfortunate that the Church has not so far placed itself where it should be: in the very centre of a debate throughout the nation on what should be a pressing moral issue.
To assume automatically that because it is possible to experiment on animals, and because notional benefits may be obtained from such research (and profits for drug companies), it is therefore right to kill or cause excruciating pain to our fellow creatures, leads us into dangerous territory indeed.
Apart from the effect on animals, what harm does such research do to those who take part in, or sanction, such cruelty? As Christians, we have priorities in saving life, and yet we see human lives wasted by lack of food, lack of safe drinking water, lack of hygiene, and by war and terrorism throughout the world. We can save many human lives without a single new drug.
Moreover, in advancing medicine, there is much that can be done without causing suffering, and in the light of good Franciscan principles of reverence before the creation and the God who brought it into being. So often in our prayers of intercession, daily and on Sundays, I have the uneasy feeling that we do not see the world in its complexity. Let us, indeed, pray for ourselves and our fellow man, but let us pray also, as I try to do, for the creation that God saw as very good, and resolve to be good stewards of animals and plants in future.
If this leaves[ sic..leads] us far beyond debating the morality of putting electrodes into the brains of kittens and monkeys, and into worrying about the slaughter of animals to indulge our appetites, then so it should.
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An Open Letter on Parkinson’s research - Neuroscientist Marius Maxwell sets the record straight on Parkinson's research
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In an open letter to VERO, Oxford University alumnus Marius Maxwell MBBChir DPhil (MD PhD) strongly refutes the often
repeated claim that the deep brain stimulation technique used to treat
Parkinson's disease patients has its origins in primate research.
On the contrary, he argues, the technique was first developed in humans decades before the first monkey model of Parkinson's was ever conceived. In a detailed chronology of the research undertaken in this field over the last century, Maxwell demonstrates that all the major advances in the treatment of movement disorders have come about through the study of actual human patients, not contrived animal models. To suggest otherwise is, according to Maxwell, to distort the true historical facts and ignore the key contributions of earlier, pioneering neuroscientists. Worst of all, the continued justification and funding of primate research for Parkinson's disease and similar disorders is hampering the development of other, more progressive and humanly relevant techniques, and hence delaying the discovery of a definitive treatment for the disease. In conclusion, Maxwell therefore calls for an immediate end to such research, in the interests not just of the defenceless animals on whom it is conducted, but of the human patients still awaiting a cure for their debilitating disease.
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Cherwell, Thurs 20 November
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Oxford Mail, Mon 17 November
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March 2007 issue of the Parish Magazine of St Giles' and St Margaret's, Oxford
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Oxford Magazine, 12 January 2007
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Press release 24 December 2006
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Church Times, 8 September 2006, p.13
The sacrifice of animals to save human lives
Dr Martin Henig
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Response published in “Oxford Magazine”, Trinity Term 2006
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Press release 03 July 2006
New group of Oxford academics calls University to account over animal lab
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The Independent. 06 March 2006
comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article349525.ece
Sharon Howe: Animal testing is both cruel and unnecessary
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The Guardian. 10 March 2006
www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1727750,00.html
We're not terrorists, and we're not against progress.
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