Fake fur is having a fashion moment this autumn. The shops are full of coats and jackets and wraps in man-made pelts, all so beautifully soft you’d be hard pressed to tell them from the real thing.

This is great news for me. It means I can finally wear the lovely, silver fox coat I invested in a couple of winters back (when we were all rich), and nobody will be any the wiser. From a glance at my coat, you’d swear a dozen adorable little acrylics had given up their lives to keep me warm and, though it seems a bit daft to buy a real fur and insist to everyone that it’s faux, darling, you never know where those Peta types might be lurking with a pot of red gloss paint.

I wish I could say I agonised over the ethics of buying a fur coat but, honestly, the price was the only consideration that made me dither. Fur is probably the oldest animal product in human use, since we haven’t had much insulation of our own for at least 100,000 years, so it’s a bit hypocritical to get sniffy about fur if you eat meat or wear leather or wool.

Or, for that matter, if you use medication or medical expertise of any kind. Animal testing of medication is the most controversial, perhaps because it is the most recent human requisitioning of animal lives for our own ends. But just about every legal drug you use, from your mildest headache tablet to the most effective blood-pressure medication, has been tested on an animal, and a live one at that.

Drugs are tested on animals; human tissue is sometimes retained in pathology labs for further study; post mortems are a brutal violation of a dead body. These are among the collateral realities of medical progress that we’d prefer not to dwell on if possible. We’re all happy to benefit from the knowledge and expertise that medical science gained from these practices, but feel obliged to be outraged when confronted with the gory details in emotive language and provocative photographs.

The term “vivisection” is a sort of linguistic cluster bomb in the arsenal of animal-rights advocates. If it lands even close to the target, they don’t stand a chance. Once an institution is forced to admit it carries out vivisection, the harm is done, and justifications and defences sound like feeble damage limitation. So John Banville, a writer of the most scrupulous and painstaking precision, knew exactly the stir he’d cause when he lobbed that device into the School of Medicine in Trinity College with a letter to The Irish Times 10 days ago.

It had come to his attention, the Booker prize-winning author wrote, that “animal vivisection is carried out regularly” in the college’s biology department. He had been informed by the National Animal Rights Association (Nara) that “they test on mice, rats, rabbits, guinea pigs and those cute little puppies with the big eyes and floppy ears” (I just made that last bit up). And “they”, he went on, even test on “sheep, pigs and horses when they can” — presumably when Igor can shepherd them unnoticed down Grafton Street and along College Green.

A Nara spokeswoman had assured him, Banville said, “that a scientist from the college had spoken to Nara protesters on the street and admitted that the only reason they still use animals is because it’s cheaper and more convenient”. And laughed an evil laugh, I bet, before shuffling back into the bowels of the college to conduct more unspeakable experiments on cuddly creatures.

Ever since, villagers with torches have been metaphorically circling the college as a debate about vivisection kicked off in online discussion forums and on letters pages. Given that he undertakes meticulous research for his novels, Banville’s admission that he rejected an offer to discuss the matter with a college scientist is quite extraordinary. “My position on the matter is not open to discussion,” he wrote. Now why is a mind as brilliant, inquiring and capacious as Banville’s firmly closed to an argument that might just sway it?

I guess unyielding certainty is always more satisfying than exploring complexities that could unsettle your convictions, but maybe we’re at cross-purposes here. If you believe that animal lives are just as important as ours, there is absolutely no argument for employing animals to test human medicines — the idea is just as repulsive as using children to test veterinary drugs. If you believe, though, that human life is paramount, then you must admit that there are certain circumstances in which it is preferable to test drugs on animals rather than on humans. It really is that simple.

I’d hate to think of animals suffering unnecessarily to make face creams and make-up, and I make a point of buying products that haven’t been tested on animals. But if there’s a convincing case for using animals to test human drugs, I’d like to hear it at least. So I rang the Medical School in Trinity and spoke to one of the professors there.

For a start, she said, the implication that medical students are slicing up living creatures with impunity is false. Most of the research is conducted on rats and mice that are bred in strictly controlled circumstances with the best of veterinary care and husbandry. The researchers are licensed and experienced, and every experiment on a living animal has to be individually cleared in advance with the Department of Health and Children, and must follow the most stringent codes. The animals are anaesthetised and treated afterwards with painkillers.

There are ongoing efforts to find alternatives to animal experimentation but, for the moment, some drugs and procedures can only be tested on living creatures. You can’t test the effect of blood-pressure medication, for example, on dead tissue.

The mystery scientist who spoke to the Nara protesters admitted, according to Banville, “that the only reason they still use animals is because it’s cheaper and more convenient”. Cheaper and more convenient than what? Testing on impoverished humans who don’t have a whole lot more choice than the rats and mice? Testing on human tissue if, given the recent furore over organ retention, you can get anyone to donate it any more? Or not testing at all?

If you buy the animal-rights’ lobby line that there are acceptable alternatives to animal testing, then you must conclude that these researchers are torturing helpless creatures just for the hell of it. I will readily admit I like wearing my silver fox-fur coat because it feels so good. I really doubt, though, that our most eminent scientific brains actively choose to experiment on animals for that same reason.

Western democracy could be our biggest loss

“Fear” is the word that has dominated coverage of the world markets this past week. Fear sent stock markets plummeting despite government assurances and bailouts, but nobody’s actually spelled out what, exactly, we are all so terrified of losing. Is it our jobs and money and houses, or is it something much, much bigger? An elderly friend of mine, who’s been around long enough to see these things go in cycles, reckons the elephant in the room is democracy itself. The crooks and the gangsters hijacked communism, he says, and now that they’ve hijacked capitalism, all of western democracy is on the line. And that is a scary thought, right enough.

brenda.power@sunday-times.ie

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