Here's a first: the Guardian has a superb piece - nuanced and thought-through - on vivisection and pharmaceutical research.

I don't fit easily into the animal rights lobby's stereotype of a sadistic pro-vivisectionist: I don't eat meat, and when I was studying for a molecular biology degree I opted out of animal experiments knowing my future career would not be spent in medical research so I couldn't justify my participation. And as someone who cares about animal welfare, I am horrified by the way in which violent animal rights protesters are dominating the vivisection debate. If experiments are banned out of the UK, as they hope, it would not only hinder the development of new and effective treatment for human disease, but animal welfare will also suffer.

...The Home Office guidelines on how to keep laboratory animals are detailed to the point of pedantry on the temperature, the amount of animal/human contact, the provision of swings for primates, and so on. In my experience, albeit limited, animals in labs are happy to see humans and show no fear.

In the UK, scientists have to justify doing an experiment that causes suffering, and the numbers approved are small. Just over 2% of animal experiments are classified as causing death or severe pain; just over half are classed as "moderate", where pain would be mediated by anaesthetic; and 39% are classed as mild.

Undercover footage at Huntingdon Life Sciences found abuse by staff and illegal practices, prompting a sustained campaign of violence against the company. Such cruelty to animals is indefensible, but we should keep it in perspective: a proportion of pets also suffer abuse, but the average household isn't subject to the spot-checks or undercover investigations that animal research labs are.

Pharmaceuticals companies are profit-driven; they don't like wasting money. Keeping animals and doing the experiments are expensive, so they would only use them when there is a clear objective - either finding new drugs, or when they are required by law. The animal rights lobby argues that new drugs usually just mimic existing ones; there is some truth in this, but it is nonsense to imply that all new drugs on the market are similar to existing ones.

Ask the rheumatoid arthritis patients on Remicade, who have been released from a life of pain, or the cancer patients who took Glivec, literally life-saving for those with a certain type of leukemia. One "scientific" animal rights activist told me that Glivec was developed without the use of animals, and showed that vivisection is unnecessary. This betrayed a total lack of understanding of how the drug was developed. First, scientists had to understand the disease, and animal experiments were vital in this process. The choice is clear: no dead mice and no Glivec; no dead mice in the UK, but more animal suffering overseas and Glivec; or well-regulated vivisection in British labs and Glivec. You decide.