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Animal testing dangerous, haphazard and inefficient

We can claim that the new lab will be used for medical research into serious illness ("Animal tests lab to be built in city", Mercury April 26), but if animals are used, I'm confident that it won't be.

Animals don't get illnesses. We're still looking for animal models for cancer, heart disease, stroke and the other major killers, and the best we've got is some animals with similar symptoms but a very different cause, nature and progression of the illness. Furthermore, it's been established from analysing animal data that the process of discovering human therapies from the animal lab is dangerous, haphazard and utterly inefficient.

This is the 21st century, and we're studying disease on the cellular level. This means we need to use humans. As we have the technology to study them without harming them. It is these areas which promise hope or human patients.

In the current climate of budget limitations we need to allocate funds efficiently.

I fear that every penny spent on this animal facility will be wasted with regard to patient welfare, yet the funds could have added enormously to our knowledge if applied to brain imaging, microdosing, cell cultures, virtual analysis and other modern areas.

Cris Iles, Vivisection Information Network, Camberley, Surrey