During the 1997 election campaign, new Labour published a pre-manifesto pamphlet, New Life for Animals, with plans for "the highest possible standards of welfare in the laboratory". Who knows whether this was influenced by discussions with the Political Animal Lobby (a campaigning organisation set up by the International Fund for Animal Welfare), which donated ₤1 million to new Labour. But the ideas definitely reflected public discomfort about some aspects of animal experimentation revealed by opinion polls at the time.
The proposal to establish a royal commission to conduct a fundamental review of the necessity and justification for animal experiments was quietly shelved (and perhaps the anger resulting from that broken promise fuelled the rise of extremism in the late 1990s). But, when Labour came to power, the expectations of animal rights groups were high. And the government did move quickly to implement a ban on the use of animals to test cosmetics, alcohol and tobacco products; more funding for research on alternatives; and stricter controls on the use of animals in the production of antibodies for research.
In November 1997, Jack Straw, then home secretary, went beyond New Life for Animals and announced that great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans etc) would no longer be used in research in the UK. There were obvious reasons for this. Apes are endangered. They are our closest living relatives. Their DNA is 99% identical to ours. And their behaviour suggests that they can reflect on the past, anticipate the future, and empathise with the feelings of other members of their species. New Zealand recently went further and essentially gave great apes legal rights similar to those of people.
Groundbreaking though these policies were, they hardly involved great sacrifice. In New Zealand there are no indigenous apes to come forward and claim their rights. There has never been any research on great apes in New Zealand, and none for decades before the ban in the UK.
But doing a special deal for apes inevitably raises questions about other animals. If we accept that one non-human species has rights similar to those of human beings (even though there can be no expectation of reciprocal responsibilities, of course), then why not monkeys (then pigs, and then mice)?
The evolutionary line to monkeys branched off from ours more than 20 million years ago, but their brains, though much smaller, look similar to ours; and their cognition, though less complex than that of a chimp, includes rich social interaction and the capacity for anxiety, fear and anticipation.
Undoubtedly, research on monkeys is now a prime target for campaigners. It is already all but illegal in some European countries, and a campaign, supported by no less than Twiggy and Uri Geller, is urging the European parliament to phase it out within six years.
What would phasing it out mean? In 2006, out of nearly 3 million animals used in research in the UK, about 3,000 were monkeys. The majority were involved in applied research, particularly the testing of new drugs and chemicals, which is required by the safety regulators.
Only 175 monkeys were used in "fundamental" medical research, especially in studies of the nervous system, reproduction and immunity (where the similarity of monkeys to humans makes them crucially important). And of these, just 57 were "old-world" macaque monkeys. The rest were South American marmosets and tamarins, which are wonderful creatures but less cognitively advanced.
So, the numbers are not large, and they are gradually declining, while the total number of animals in research is creeping up, and the overall medical research budget is rising much faster.
Just as for cosmetics testing and research on great apes, the small numbers of monkeys used in basic medical research might tempt the politicians to believe that a ban would do little damage. But the very fact that the numbers are small is a powerful signal of the effectiveness of the cost-benefit analysis that underpins the granting of licences for research. Every project has to be justified on the grounds that the science is important, there is no alternative to the use of animals and the numbers involved are the smallest possible. And, most important, both the techniques and the species must be chosen to minimise the potential for suffering.
A licence for research on monkeys will be granted only when no other species can answer the scientific question - and the question must be really important.
A ban on monkey research would save the lives of a few animals in this country, but it would leave the UK without the ability to tackle important areas of medical research. The US, China and Japan would probably take up the scientific slack. But would the politicians then be morally consistent and stop to the UK public benefiting from any medical knowledge and new treatments that might flow from research on monkeys elsewhere?
I no longer use animals in my research, and I am relieved to be free of the burden of responsibility and displeasure that I believe all scientists who have to use animals feel. But while using animals in the lab is distasteful, it is also vital for the greater good (for animals as well as people) that comes from medical research.
Absolute bans, even those on the use of great apes, are not the right way forward. They simply replace a defensible, common-sense ethical boundary (between human beings and the rest of the animal world) with a dubious one (between the lucky banned species and the rest). Recent research shows that New Caledonian crows and western scrub jays exceed, in some respects, the cognitive capacities of great apes. Should they be in the ban or out? Should we ban research on old-world monkeys but not marmosets?
I think that we should respect the logic and the powerful common sense of weighing all the costs against the potential benefits. That process had made research on great apes inconceivable long before it was banned, and has reduced the permissible work on monkeys to tiny, but crucial areas of research.