Sir

Your Opinion article (“Distasteful but necessary”, Nature 417, 673; 200210.1038/417673a) does not explore in depth the morality of experimenting on non-human primates. You claim that the issue is “simple”, that “potential benefits must be weighed against the suffering caused”. But nobody would apply a cost-benefit test to experimenting on people against their will. What is the difference? Your argument can only be that non-human primates are one sort of primate and we are another, so it is acceptable for us to cause them pain.

That approach cannot withstand any intellectual scrutiny. Primates are just as capable of suffering as we are. Suffering, and its avoidance, lies at the heart of all moral philosophy. If it is wrong to cause suffering to people deliberately — whatever the benefits to others — it must also be wrong to do so to other primates.

You also say that it is time to inform public opinion about primate research. I agree. But that has to mean full information, not simply such information as researchers find it convenient to disclose. It should not take undercover investigations, such as that recently carried out by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) into primate research at Cambridge University, to reveal the extent of suffering involved (caused both by the experiments and the housing conditions) and to raise serious questions about the usefulness of the research.

BUAV is calling for an inquiry into primate research in the United Kingdom independent of the Home Office, which has once again shown, in the Cambridge case, that it is not up to its regulatory task. Will primate researchers support BUAV in this call? If not, it will only strengthen the growing perception that researchers and government alike would prefer to keep the public in the dark.