Dennis B Stuart is incorrect to assert that cancer research is a fraud or that dogs played no part in discovering insulin (Argus, November 18), as a simple web search would demonstrate.

The citations supporting his view included physicist Linus Pauling, who died in 1944, and campaigner M Beddow Bayly who died in 1962.

Aside from the fact that being a physicist does not make you a cancer doctor, anybody who thinks that medicine has not moved on since the Second World War needs to check their facts.

Likewise, Mr Stuart is wrong to assert that increasing numbers of doctors are forming groups against animal research.

There has always been a hardcore minority of people with the title Dr to oppose animal research, just as there is hardcore minority of doctors who oppose the idea of anthropogenic climate change.

Having a doctorate, particularly in an unrelated field, does not make their claims true.

This really isn’t a game. Animals are used only when there is no alternative in medical, veterinary and environmental research.

Whilst it is admirable to have concern for lab animals, which are almost all mice, rats, fish and birds, there is nothing ethical about remaining indifferent to human and animal suffering outside the lab.

It is, in addition, rather dishonest to attempt to rubbish animal models using cherry-picked and heavily biased sources from the middle of the last century. Things have moved on.

Chris Magee Understanding Animal Research Hodgkin Huxley House Farringdon Lane, London EC1R 3AW