WE learn that prime minister Tony Blair gives his backing to the use of animals in medical research.

It would seem that he is giving way to a backlash against the stupid extremes of some so-called animal rights activists.

In his overreaction, he is forgetting the ever-rowing number of scientists and doctors who say that vivisection is a dangerous science: the differences across species and between human and non-human is so vast that to experiment on an animal for hope of a cure for a human sickness is like searching for a pebble at the bottom of an ocean.

Those who disbelieve us are welcome to contact us and we will put them in touch with those scientific organisations that work for an end to animal use and a beginning to a more valuable research.

Today's vivisection movement began with a rather mad Frenchman, Rene Descartes.

He regarded animals as mere machines, and their screams of pain when he experimented on them as no more than a mechanical noise.

After Descartes' death, his widow and daughter founded the first anti-vivisection society.

Since then, some great people, including Queen Victoria and Cardinal Manning, have worked hard to see an end to an evil butchery that tries to call itself science.' There is big money in vivisection and also some very big medical mistakes.

JENNIFER POTHECARY, Salisbury Animal Friends, Amesbury Road, Newton Toney
RICHARD HARVEY, Folkestone Road, Salisbury