THIS week is World Laboratory Animal Week and on April 24, eight of us protested against the US-owned contract testing laboratory Covance in Harrogate, which experiments on animals.

The point I wished to make was that between 50,000 and 100,000 people are killed annually in Britain, and the same in France (not to mention the rest of the world) by adverse drug reactions (ADR). In fact they are actually one of the four biggest killers in the developed West.

On my website (www.wondersoftheuniverse.eu) is a list of medical scientists for human health who are against animal experiments. I urge your readers to check the site for real scientific data.

Animal experimenting is producing data that is fraudulent for humans and allowing chemicals on to the market which should never have been made in the first place. Data obtained from a different species has never, and could never, be accurate, ie. Different = not the same.

It is vitally important for the future of human health that medical substances and toxic chemicals be evaluated scientifically and species-specifically, using toxicogenomics along with other non-animal research methods (please see www.antidote-europe.org for more information).

An informed public will understand the need to abolish animal experiments immediately.

Annabel Holt,

Stearsby Hagg Farm,

Brandsby,

York.

Updated: 09:21 Saturday, April 29, 2006