Touching STORY............carry me in ur arms

[HELWAA]

salaam aleykum


Carry me in your Arms


When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I’ve got something to tell you. She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes.

Suddenly I didn’t know how to say it. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce. I raised the topic calmly. She didn’t seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, why? I avoided her question. This made her angry. She shouted at me, ” you are not a man!”

That night, we didn’t talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage. But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer; I had lost my heart to a lovely girl called Dew. I didn’t love her anymore. I just pitied her!

With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement which stated that she could own our house, 30% shares of my company and the car. She glanced at it and then tore it to pieces. The woman who had spent ten years of her life with me had become a stranger. I felt sorry for her wasted time, resources and energy but I could not take back what I had said, for I loved Dew so dearly.

Finally she cried loudly in front of me, which was what I had expected to see. To me, her cry was actually a kind of release. The idea of divorce which had obsessed me for several weeks seemed to be firmer and clearer now.

The next day, I came back home very late and found her writing something at the table. I didn’t have supper but went straight to sleep and fell fast asleep because I was tired after an eventful day with Dew. When I woke up, she was still there at the table writing. I just did’nt care so I turned over and was asleep again.

In the morning she presented her divorce conditions: she didn’t want anything from me, but needed a month’s notice before the divorce. She requested that in that one month, we both struggle to live as normal a life as possible. Her reasons were simple: our son had his exams in a month’s time and she didn’t want to disrupt him with our broken marriage.

This was agreeable to me. But she had something more, she asked me to recall how I had carried her into out bridal room on our wedding day. She requested that everyday for the month’s duration I carry her out of our bedroom to the front door ever morning. I thought she was going crazy.

Just to make our last days together bearable I accepted her odd request. I told Dew about my wife’s divorce conditions. She laughed loudly and thought it was absurd. No matter what tricks she has, she has to face the divorce, she said scornfully. My wife and I hadn’t had any body contact since my divorce intention was explicitly expressed. So when I carried her out on the first day, we both appeared clumsy. Our son clapped behind us, daddy is holding mummy in his arms. His words brought me a sense of pain. From the bedroom to the sitting room, then to the door, I walked over ten meters with her in my arms. She closed her eyes and said softly, don’t tell our son about the divorce. I nodded, feeling somewhat upset. I put her down outside the door. She went to wait for the bus to work. I drove alone to the office.

On the second day, both of us acted much more easily. She leaned on my chest.. I could smell the fragrance of her blouse. I realized that I hadn’t looked at this woman carefully for a long time. I realized she was not young any more. There were fine wrinkles on her face, her hair was graying! Our marriage had taken its toll on her. For a minute I wondered what I had done to her.

On the fourth day, when I lifted her up, I felt a sense of intimacy returning. This was the woman who had given ten years of her life to me. On the fifth and sixth day, I realized that our sense of intimacy was growing again. I didn’t tell Dew about this. It became easier to carry her as the month slipped by. Perhaps the everyday workout made me stronger.

She was choosing what to wear one morning. She tried on quite a few dresses but could not find a suitable one. Then she sighed, all my dresses have grown bigger. I suddenly realized that she had grown so thin, that was the reason why I could carry her more easily. Suddenly it hit me, .. she had buried so much pain and bitterness in her heart.

Subconsciously I reached out and touched her head. Our son came in at the moment and said, Dad, it’s time to carry mum out. To him, seeing his father carrying his mother out had become an essential part of his life. My wife gestured to our son to come close and hugged him tightly. I turned my face away because I was afraid I might change my mind at this last minute. I then held her in my arms, walking from the bedroom, through the sitting room, to the hallway. Her hand surrounded my neck softly and naturally. I held her body tightly; it was just like our wedding day.

But her much lighter weight made me sad. On the last day, when I held her in my arms I could hardly move a step. Our son had gone to school. I held her tightly and said, I hadn’t noticed that our life lacked intimacy. I drove to office… jumped out of the car swiftly without locking the door. I was afraid any delay would make me change my mind… I walked upstairs. Dew opened the door and I said to her, Sorry, Dew, I do not want the divorce anymore.

She looked at me, astonished. Then touched my forehead. Do you have a fever? She said. I moved her hand off my head. Sorry, Dew, I said, I won’t divorce. My marriage life was boring probably because she and I didn’t value the details of our lives, not because we didn’t love each other any more. Now I realized that since I carried her into my home on our wedding day I am supposed to hold her until one of us departs this world.

Dew seemed to suddenly wake up. She gave me a loud slap and then slammed the door and burst into tears. I walked downstairs and drove away. At the floral shop on the way, I ordered a bouquet of flowers for my wife. The sales girl asked me what to write on the card. I smiled and wrote: I ll carry you out every morning until we are old.

The small details of our lives are what really matter in a relationship. It is not the mansion, the car, the property, the bank balance that matters. These create an environment conducive for happiness but cannot give happiness in themselves. So find time to be your spouse’s friend and do those little things for each other that build a relationship.

[Pitsaleh]

superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?


e amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?k an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?


e amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you? as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once th

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?


e amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?


e amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?k an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?


e amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you? as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once th

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?


e amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?


e amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?k an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?


e amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you? as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once th

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?

A strange black tide of irrationalism and superstition is currently washing over science, and trying to drown the free pursuit of knowledge. Some of its waves are crude and obvious, like the resurgent Christian creationism and Islamic fundamentalism. But most are more subtle, taking care to pose as alternative scientific theories. Pick up any newspaper any day and you’ll find these irrationalists poisoning debates with sickly sea-water – the deniers of anthropogenic global warming, the peddlers of ‘alternative’ medicine, the animal rights activists who claim that experimenting on animals is totally useless.

The current debate about whether to lift the ban on testing on higher primates – chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas – in a global emergency is a good example of this encroaching darkness. There is a serious debate about whether we can legitimately use our closest cousins as instruments for our own advancement, and, as it happens, I come down on the side of the animal rights activists. An adult gorilla has the same ability to use language, the same complex emotions, and the same capacity to feel pain as a three-year-old human child, or many disabled adults. So we should only use that gorilla in an experiment if we would also use a three-year-old child or a disabled adult with comparable mental functioning – an abhorrent situation I cannot imagine ever sanctioning.

Professor Colin Blakemore, the extraordinary brain scientist who sparked this debate, believes the species boundary between humans and gorillas is enough to sanction the difference in treatment. I don’t. Species boundaries are simply arbitrary places on the evolutionary chain, and irrelevant when compared to the capacity to feel pain and to understand yourself over time.

But however much I disagree with Professor Blakemore, he has been right to raise it as a painful moral dilemma. There is indeed an incredible amount of medical progress we could reap from higher primates if we experimented on them, and we are forfeiting it by abandoning the experiments. It’s a terrible choice. The people I cannot respect are the animal rights activists who deny this dilemma even exists, and argue that experimenting on animals is useless. They spread bogus, black pseudo-scientific theories (often misquoting senior scientists) denying animal tests have ever lead to scientific progress – ignoring the fact that insulin was discovered after testing on dogs, and many developments in neuroscience have come from testing on primates. They claim that scientists are simply sadists, running these experiments for Mengelian purposes.

I have a modest solution to resolve the dilemmas thrown up by these new anti-science movements. Just as most of us now carry organ donor cards, we should all carry Ethical Consistency cards that declare our beliefs about science and are checked before we receive any medical treatment. I would reluctantly but certainly tick a box that said I disagree with testing on higher primates. No doctor should give me treatments derived from tortured gorillas. The people like Morrissey, who jeer “we will get you” at all scientists who test on animals (even mice) and demand that “if you believe in vivisection, go and be vivisected on yourself”, should of course decline all medicines that have ever been tested by scientists on animals. Here are the other boxes that should be listed on the card – ones I certainly would not tick:

Box one. Do you accept the theory of evolution? If the answer is no, then – as the American journalist Katha Pollit has suggested – you should be denied all medical treatment dependent on it. That means no vaccinations for creationists. Flu vaccines only work because scientists track the evolution of the influenza virus and adjust the vaccine accordingly. But creationists believe there is only one fixed influenza virus, created by a supernatural ‘God’ at the beginning of time. If bird flu evolves to the point of human-to-human transmission, they will have to refuse to accept Tamiflu on the grounds that the science behind it is “just a theory” and is “filled with holes”. We can expect the rapid depopulation if the Deep South if they have any ethical consistency.

Box two. Do you believe in ‘alternative’ medicine? Do you believe, as Charles Windsor does, that it is more important for a medicine to be “rooted in ancient traditions that intuitively understood the need to maintain balance and harmony with our minds, bodies and the natural world” than for it to work in scientific trials? Fine. Next time you are in a car crash, the doctors will not send for a surgeon. They will send for an African witch-doctor – you know, the ones Africans can’t ditch fast enough once they have access to real medicine – and he will use magical potions and try to achieve “balance and harmony” between your bashed-in mind and your bleeding body.

To be fair to the advocates of alternative medicine, most of them are not so foolish. They are aware at some level that the treatments they peddle are snake oil, because when confronted with a real medical problem, they almost always use real medicine. The great American sceptic James Randi recently reported from an alternative medicine convention where there was some broken glass on the floor. The delegates who inadvertently stepped in it headed immediately for the first aid tent, mysteriously forgetting their hatred of “cold”, “inhuman” and “Western” medicine and their preference for their own “soulful” and “balanced” treatments.

Box three. Are you a postmodernist who thinks rational “Western” science – an extremely insulting term, given that some of the greatest scientific achievements today are being made in Korea and India – is just “one discourse among many”? Do you think it at the very least “equivalent” to “other discourses” like witch-doctory? Okay, when you arrive in Casualty, they will toss a dice to see which of these different equivalent treatments you receive. Even numbers, a “Western” doctor, odd numbers a Japanese reiki doctor who will use his skill at manipulating invisible forces to heal you. Still a postmodernist?

Box four. Do you accept that man-made global warming is real, and has doubled the intensity of hurricanes in the past fifty years? If the answer is no, then your home should be logged on a computer database, and when those super-charged hurricanes come, we will not rescue you. You can sit in your battered home and mock those silly greens and those grant-greedy scientists who made such impossible predictions.

Box five. Are you a religious fundamentalist who believes women are irrational and inferior and should be confined to the home? Fine, no penicillin for you. Discovered by one of those irrational women, you see, when she should have been wiping up some baby vomit instead. If you get wheeled into A&E, no female surgeons and no medicines developed by women for you. Still such a misogynist now? Oh, and if you’re a religious fundamentalist who believes gays should be killed, sorry, but no computers. That pesky faggot Alan Turing played a key role in developing them, you see, and according to you he should have been beheaded or gently stoned to death.

Box six. Do you think an embryo no larger than a speck of dust is a human being with an invisible, intangible “soul” that mysteriously appears when a sperm fertilises an egg, and should never be tested on? Fine. Once the amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?


e amazing medical treatments that come from embryo experimentation become available, you’ll decline them, won’t you?

For too long, people have been allowed to piggy-back on the Enlightenment, enjoying its incredible fruits but jeering at it as “soulless” or fundamentally flawed. But how many people would cling to these irrationalist anti-science theories if they actually had to feel the consequences in their own blood and bone? I am prepared to pay for my belief that testing on higher primates is deeply morally wrong. Are the opponents of science prepared to pay for theirs?