Animal research deserves defending

In the wake of actions such as animal rights activists setting fire to the holiday home of Swiss drug major Novartis' chief executive Daniel Vasella's holiday home in Austria, and previously desecrating the graves of relatives, stealing the remains of his mother (The Pharma Letter August 11), Faculty of 1000 Biology members have throw their support behind a call to educate the public about animal research.

In a recent commentary, 'We must face the threats,' in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers Dario Ringach and David Jentsch spoke out against animal rights extremism. They urged the scientific community to stand together and fight misconceptions about experiments using animals. That their plea has been heard is clear from the unanimously positive response it received on the Faculty of 1000 Biology web site.

Faculty of 1000 Biology is an on-line service where leading researchers from around the world review papers in their field that catch their eye. Faculty members choose the articles they highlight and rarely has a paper received as much attention and praise as this piece on animal rights extremism. Within a week it became the most highly-rated paper of the past few years.