Posted by Georgina the Giraffe under blog's category : Antivivisection & extremism

We were of course delighted by the verdicts in the court case against animal rights extremists operating in the name of SHAC, as reported extensively in the media.

As a recent article on The Guardian's Comment Is Free explains, there is no reason why the ‘rights' of the animals which the extremists are supposedly defending should override the 'rights‘ of those whose lives depend on medical advances achieved partly through animal research.

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Posted by Zebedee under blog's category : Research & medical benefits

The Guardian today carries an article on the ‘top 10' scientific breakthroughs of 2008, named by the leading scientific journal Science. At number one is the ‘feat of biological alchemy' that offers scientists the hope of growing replacement organs from patients' own skin cells.

Research in mice published just over a year ago showed that adult cells could be transformed into stem cells that could be made to regenerate all kinds of tissue to treat diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or diabetes. The insights from the mouse work on so-called iPS cells were blogged at the time by our friends over at Pro-Test.

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Posted by Georgina the Giraffe under blog's category : Communications & media

As of yesterday afternoon, our new name of Understanding Animal Research has been legally adopted. The new organisation will be fully up and running at the beginning of next year, once we have completed the merger with our partner organisation, the Coalition for Medical Progress. At the same time, we will be adopting a new strategy which reflects the changing nature of the debate. Watch this space - to find out in due course about our new space on the web.

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