I refer to your story, Animal rights activists rack up litany of unsolved crimes (Oxford Mail, January 8).

Your readers must wonder why the Oxford Mail concerns itself with 20 unsolved crimes, none of which caused any harm to any living being, when there are countless numbers of murderers, paedophiles and rapists at large, not to mention burglars, muggers and thieves.

The Home Office has a backlog of 27,529 documents detailing convictions of UK citizens abroad, and police are searching for 525 serious criminals, such as paedophiles, rapists and murderers, convicted overseas, who could be working with children and vulnerable adults in this country. The pro-vivisection lobby and its bedfellows, the Government, gleefully jump on the bandwagon to blacken anti-vivisectionists at every opportunity.

It is time they stopped their lies about the benefits of animal research, came clean about the harm that it is doing to humans, and admitted that the reason people are needlessly still dying of cancer, strokes, heart disease, multiple sclerosis etc, as well as suffering the side effects of drugs, is because of animal research.

PAMELA KINNUNEN Purley Avenue London