Those who see no harm in the aims and objectives of scientists working in the field of human embryo experimentation should perhaps consider for a moment the increasingly callous way in which they treat the animal kingdom.

It is true, in some respects, that society displays compassion towards animals that sometimes exceeds even that accorded to human beings.

However, when a conflict of interests arises, this compassion soon evaporates.

Witness the drastic and comprehensive slaughter during the foot and mouth epidemic, which, though it horrified much of the nation, was mercilessly undertaken for what were perhaps dubious economic reasons.

Whether it is right to use animals for research into incurable diseases may be debatable. But this utilitarian approach does not stop there.

Gone are the days when they were husbanded with some degree of respect as God's creatures.

Nowadays, animals are increasingly bred as scientific commodities - genetically created to yield unnatural quantities of meat and milk at the expense of their general health and well-being and cloned to harvest proteins for human consumption - a process which results in malformed limbs, malfunctioning organs and early, painful death for the animals.

Even human DNA is introduced into the ovaries of cattle, pigs and rabbits in a bid to grow organs for spare-part surgery.

Now that Darwinian notions of evolution are more or less universally accepted in the Western world, the distinction between man and beast has largely been eroded.

In such circumstances, one can only hazard a guess at what these developments portend for the future of the human race.

-John Dixon, Storrington, Pulborough