Of all the disturbing issues currently in the news, one of the most distressing and seemingly insoluble must be that of scientific experimentation on animals and the consequent proposals to take stronger action against animal rights activists.

Obviously, violence on the part of protesters is already illegal and cannot be condoned.

But neither can the use of nine million animals in European Union laboratories every year.

I don't doubt that, historically, scientific breakthroughs have been made using animals but, as we know, "the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there". We should have moved on by now.

The long-awaited solution is of course to use cells and cultures and computers instead of live animals for tests and experiments but it is taking too long.

Not nearly enough money and effort have been invested in the pursuit of this ideal. What happened to the proposed Royal Commission to study all aspects of the situation?

Now we are told our economy is so dependent on the pharmaceutical industry that we must not do anything that might drive them away.

For however long we are obliged to tolerate animal testing, we should at least accept it is morally wrong.

What sort of ethical code would allow us to capture primates in the wild, lock them up and conduct painful experiments on them because, ironically, they are our closest genetic relatives?

We used to believe the difference between humans and other animals was the ability to use tools. Now this is disproved, perhaps it should be the ability to feel compassion.

-Elizabeth Syrett, Lewes