London

A group of charities is to move its bank account following its bank's refusal to guarantee that it would stand up to public protests against animal research.

The Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC) said on 23 April that it would close its account with the HSBC bank after the HSBC refused to confirm that it would stand by customers if they were targeted by animal-rights activists.

The HSBC was criticized recently for bowing to animal-rights campaigners when it joined other banks and stockbrokers in refusing to handle shares in the drug-testing group Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) following threats from activists.

The AMRC's move is seen as part of a trend towards more aggressive tactics by British medical researchers in their public-relations war against animal-rights activists.

Making a point: animal-rights activists might try carrying this card, their opponents suggest.

For example, the BioIndustry Association, which represents the UK biotechnology industry, wrote to venture capitalists in March urging them not to cave in to antivivisection protesters. And in a joint letter to The Times newspaper last week, the heads of a dozen academic and commercial research organizations pointed to the “huge contribution that laboratory animal research has made to medical science”. The patients' group Seriously Ill for Medical Research has sent spoof donor cards to animal-rights protesters asking them to refuse medical treatment.

An AMRC statement said: “Following recent targeting by animal rights activists of banks and investment funds, AMRC had sought assurances from HSBC that the bank would not give in to a similar campaign... AMRC executive council considered HSBC's responses unsatisfactory and has agreed to move its account.”

The AMRC has a few hundred thousand pounds in its account, but its 112 members, which include the Wellcome Trust and the Cancer Research Campaign, have combined assets of almost £16 billion (US$23 billion).

Diana Garnham, the AMRC's chief executive, says she expects many of its charities to seek similar assurances from their banks. The Wellcome Trust says it is “keeping a careful eye on how events unfold”.

A spokesman for HSBC says the bank was “disappointed” with the AMRC's decision. The association put the bank in an impossible position, he says, by demanding a “100% legal guarantee” to stand by its members, whatever the circumstances.

The campaign against HLS included break-ins at its suppliers' factories and threats to its investors. In February, the company's managing director was attacked by masked assailants wielding baseball bats (see Nature 410, 8; 2001).