Animal Activists Go Ape at Downing

The Downing Site was mobbed by a group of Animal Rights protesters last Friday.

Members of the group, aligned with the Week of Action against University Vivisection, took up stations around the site and the police had to be called to get them to leave.

The protests were in response to an undercover report by the past British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection into the practices of some Cambridge labs which claimed that marmoset experiments conducted at the site amounted to animal abuse and creulty.

BUAV secretly filmed 400-500 marmoset monkeys imprisoned in small cages to be used as human models for basic and applied brain research. The group claimed that the monkeys were deliberately brain damaged .

Campaigners shouted to the few students and tourists present that “these painful, cruel tests and barren sterile animal housing that cause animals to literally go mad belong firmly in the past”

The group told The Tab "Scientists have shown that drugs tested on animals aren't accurate enough to be used for humans anyway.

"Micro dosing, DNA chips and computer modelling is the future"

They urged Cambridge to immediately divert all vivisection funds to these cutting-edge technologies.

A University spokeman however claimed “Good science and good animal welfare go hand in hand… [we] work to the highest possible standards of animal care.”

Cambridge has been known in the past to ignore the claims of protesters.

In the end, the protestors’ nefarious activities, including but not limited to “holding posters, giving out leaflets and speaking on megaphones” caught the watchful eye of University Security, who told The Tab that “peaceful protest” was all well and good, but not when “university business” is disrupted.