BATTLE lines are being drawn for a confrontation next week that will decide the future of an international neuroscience centre. Why the controversy? Because the centre, to be built in Britain on the outskirts of Cambridge, will experiment on primates, our nearest animal relatives.
Leading the opposition to the centre are animal welfare groups. Not only do they object on moral grounds to experiments on primates, they also plan to challenge the entire scientific rationale for such research. Ranged against them are the centre’s supporters, who say that failure to build it will stymie neuroscience across Europe. Without it, they…
