Leading human rights defence barrister Michael Mansfield QC has endorsed the conditions for last Parliamentary session's Early Day Motion (EDM) 263 and its updated EDM 22 from the current session. Tabled by Paul Flynn MP these EDMs have been signed by 52 MPa (and climbing) and call for animal experiments to be held to effective, public scientific account for the first time in the history of human medicine.

EDM 22 places its call for open debate within the context of the animal experimentation community's 'Declaration On Openness on Animal Research', which commits its signatories to developing communications with the media and public.

What makes these debates unique, and why are they so important?

A panel of judges will be present who will include experts from the fields of clinical medicine, complexity/chaos theory, philosophy of science, evolutionary biology, clinical research, drug development, and basic research.

The debate conditions are specifically designed to achieve a scientific result which can be submitted as evidence in a wider legal action as well as to government bodies, in order to change now demonstrably outdated laws. The significance of this is in sharp contrast to the more casual 'vote on line' or show of hands at the end of previous debates, which all too often even muddle science and morality.

Our call for public science debates will allow current scientific evidence to be heard which proves that animals are not capable of predicting human responses - evidence that will be presented by Europeans for Medical Advancement to invalidate such experiments and call for their immediate abandonment.

These debates are not about 'reduction' of animal numbers, which is in itself an unsound ethical policy: what about the million of animals still left over in the labs? 'Reducing' animal numbers also ignores current science and there is no sane reason to wait decades to find 'alternatives' to a method that doesn't work in the first place. Failure must always be abandoned on its own grounds. Existing modern science deserves all our funding resources and the UK must catch up with modern science, inline with the more progressive countries in biomedical research.