YOUR editorial (Standing up to thugs, last week) denies the fact that there is a growing number of ordinary people who feel very uneasy about our continued reliance on the torture and abuse of animals to correct what are, in the main, self-inflicted health problems.

A human body needs fresh organic food, clean water and clean air but because of our greed and insatiable need to be entertained we stuff it with all manner of poisons. This is our choice. Science has come to our rescue and animals are paying the price for our folly.

The government should offer a very substantial reward for the discovery of an alternative to animal testing.

Colin Evans
Thames Ditton, Surrey

VITAL RESISTANCE: Pro-Test is to be congratulated on standing up to the animal rights terrorists. They must keep going until everyone connected with vital research can live free from the fear of intimidation.

Fred Henley
York

LACK OF FEELING? The nub of the animal “rights” issue is hinted at in Jasper Gerard’s final sentence on the subject: “These people are lower than animals” (News, last week).

We have no way of knowing for certain how animals perceive their place in the “circle of life”. Maybe we should see animals as not having any concerns at all, least of all our human ones. Looked at from this perspective, surely we are all lower than animals.

Tom Kemp
Brimscombe, Gloucestershire

INSIDER DEALINGS: Your leader does not address the failure of the police to deal with the thugs. These are people who are wide open to infiltration by intelligence specialists and a much easier target than the security conscious IRA, who have nevertheless been watched from within for decades.

Ronald Bertrand
Cambridge

ATROCITY: The argument of pro-vivisectionists comes down to this: we are superior, therefore we have the right to inflict suffering on the inferior. This is precisely the supremacist mindset behind the history of all human atrocity.

John Davison
London SW9

PAIN AND GAIN: I will not have my moral compass set by a 16-year-old self-publicist (Focus, last week) and a bunch of students who will march in any cause. Neither will I pontificate on pain that I haven’t inflicted or experienced.

Edward Wheatley
Hunstanton, Norfolk

NOT CUDDLY: Not all animal right supporters are extremists. And many scientists do not experiment with animals, for the reaction of an animal to tests can be different to that of a human.

I do not support any kind of violence to humans or animals. I just find it sad that a person who can cuddle the cat can also vivisect.

Lola Carrillo
Edinburgh