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Pro-Test

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Pro-Test is a British-based student group founded on January 29, 2006 to counter SPEAK, an animal-rights campaign opposing the construction by Oxford University of a controversial biomedical facility utilizing animal-research, which SPEAK believes may include a primate-testing centre.

The group was founded by Laurie Pycroft, a 16-year-old from Swindon, who uses the online pseudonym "Sqrrl101". According to its website, it is headed by a committee consisting of Pycroft and eight students, including Iain Simpson, identified by the Daily Telegraph as a second-year Philosophy, Politics, and Economics student at Oxford.

According to its website, Pro-Test stands for "science, reasoned debate and, above all, the welfare of mankind. Our organisation supports only non-violent protest and we condemn anyone who uses violence or intimidation to further their cause, no matter what that cause may be." The Guardian has written that it is a "new public interest cause" seeking to "defend animal-testing to advance medical science."

The formation of the group coincided with threats made by the Animal Liberation Front against Oxford staff and students. ALF spokesman, Robin Webb confirmed that "high-level student groups working against protesters may be targeted." The Oxford research centre at the eye of the storm is located on South Parks Road behind a five-metre (15 ft) barrier, being built by workmen wearing balaclavas and using unmarked vehicles, after the first contractor, Montpelier, pulled out in the face of threats from animal-rights activists.

Background

Pycroft describes in his LiveJournal how he set up Pro-Test after visiting his girlfriend in Oxford on January 28 and watching a SPEAK demonstration from the window of a coffee shop. Pycroft, his girlfriend, and one other, staged a personal counter-demonstration, and after attracting interest from the media, other students, and the pro-animal-testing movement, decided to schedule a second demonstration to coincide with a SPEAK protest on February 25, 2006.

According to The Times, "Pro-Test’s tactics mirror those of animal rights activists, with about 150 students using websites and chat forums to organise protests."

Activities

According to The Daily Telegraph, more than a thousand Oxford University students are expected to take part in the demonstration "in protest against anti-vivisectionists who are threatening the university." The newspaper reports that a number of politicians and scientists will address the demonstrators, including Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, and the Radcliffe Hospital's neuro-surgeon Professor Tipu Aziz, whose research into Parkinson's disease involves experimenting on primates. Other speakers named on the Pro-Test website and in The Guardian include Simon Festing of the Research Defence Society and Professor John Stein of the university's Sensorimotor Control Lab.

An un-named Oxford academic has 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.

References

Further reading

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