Pro-Test
[2] Pro-Test held its first rally on 25 February 2006, attracting hundreds in support of the research facility and opposed by a smaller number of anti-lab demonstrators.
"[5] It is now run by a committee of ten: academics (Tipu Aziz, John Stein, and David Priestman), five Oxford graduate and undergraduate students, medical writer Alison Eden, and Pycroft.
Construction work is carried out by workmen wearing balaclavas and using unmarked vehicles, after the first contractor, Walter Lilly, owned by Montpellier plc, pulled out in the face of threats.
[10] The formation of Pro-Test coincided with threats made by the Animal Liberation Front, against Oxford staff and students, on the Bite Back website.
"[12] Pycroft describes in his blog, hosted at the LiveJournal website, how he set up Pro-Test after visiting his girlfriend in Oxford on 28 January 2006 and watching a SPEAK demonstration from the window of a coffee shop.
After writing about the experience on his blog, Pycroft has said he was receiving 300 hits an hour within days,[15] and after attracting interest from the media, Oxford students, and the pro-animal-testing movement, he decided to schedule a second demonstration to coincide with a SPEAK protest on 25 February 2006.
These included Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat science spokesperson and MP for Oxford West and Abingdon; the Radcliffe Hospital's neurosurgeon and Pro-Test committee member Professor Tipu Aziz,[6] whose research into Parkinson's disease "involves the use of primates,"[8] and who recently spoke out in support of testing cosmetics on animals;[20] Simon Festing of the Research Defence Society, a lobby group funded by the pharmaceutical industry and universities; and Pro-Test committee member Professor John Stein,[6] an Oxford neurophysiologist who "induces Parkinson's disease in monkeys and then attaches electrodes to their brains to test therapies which may help human sufferers," according to The Guardian.
Peter Hollins, chief executive of the British Heart Foundation and chair of the Coalition for Medical Progress, was also scheduled to attend but was unable due to illness.
[26][27] At the event, Tom Holder announced the launch of The Pro-Test Petition which aims to give people in the US the "opportunity to show [their] support for the scientists and [their] opposition to the use of threats and violence".
An unnamed Oxford academic told the BBC that "a war is looming over 'scientific freedom' and the 'future of progress'," and suggests that the Pro-Test campaign is part of a wider reaction against animal-rights activism.
On 20 April 2013, another foray to an animal testing facility took place at the University of Milan,[37] which led to the release of mice and rabbits and consistent damage to researches carried out for years[38]).
[42][43] On 19 September 2013 a second demonstration took place,[44] this time in Rome, to persuade the Italian government to revise the national amendments to the European Directive 2013/63/EU which could put at risk biomedical research in Italy.
[45] Pro-Test Deutschland is a non-profit organization that first began as a reaction to the decision made by Nikos Logothetis, director of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen to discontinue his research with nonhuman primates.
To date Pro-Test Deutschland mostly focuses its activities on maintaining an informative and well-balanced website containing FAQs and fact checking sections as well as on community outreach and media communication.
Since journalists in Germany wishing to report on animal research had heretofore been lacking reliable information in German, Pro-Test Deutschland quickly received a lot of attention, with national newspapers printing interviews.
[49] Pro-Test Deutschland, being initially based in Tübingen, has by now grown to include students and scientists in other German towns and cities such as Frankfurt, Bonn, Münster, Göttingen, Leipzig and Berlin.
