Sir, - The Irish Times's extraordinary appetite for promoting live animal experiments was displayed yet again in its issue of April 27th.
On the Science Today page, Dick Ahlstrom starts his article by telling us that a group of Atlantic Ocean toadfish are enjoying a "trip of a lifetime" on board the space shuttle Columbia. Really?
The article reveals that a variety of animal species are involved in 26 experiments for Neurolab - a long space flight to study the effects of weightlessness on the nervous system and balance.
Since human astronauts have been studied in space for nearly 30 years, it would appear a backward step to be studying toadfish. It is then explained that "the inner ear of these fish, which helps in sense motion, is highly similar to that of humans and other mammals". It therefore follows that fish (and other animals) will also suffer the extremely disconcerting and uncomfortable (to say the least) sensory overload called "space sickness".
Sending animals on a one-way ticket to space to suffer and die (it is safe to assume the experiments will require the animals' death) is archaic and indefensible. If objections are not raised we will again see dogs, cats, and then genetically engineered pigs being blasted into orbit. And this, when only last year NASA was forced by animal protection groups to cancel, on welfare grounds, its hideous BION programme involving monkeys going to space (and dying).
The fact that dozens of baby rats have already died on board the Columbia and that this news was initially concealed by NASA simply confirms our view.
Surely, it is about time your science correspondents stopped glorifying vivisection and looked beyond the scientific dinosaurs who refuse to see approaches to obtaining valid scientific information other than those misusing living creatures. Using the latest innovative technologies, more accurate information will be gleaned from human astronauts, who can at least explain how they are feeling, and will be the ultimate beneficiaries of any research. Animals do not belong in space. - Yours, etc.,
Yvonne Smalley,
Irish Anti-Vivisection Society, Greystones, Co Wicklow.