Sir, – Despite a post-election pledge by the coalition government to reduce animal experiments, new official figures show that the total has again risen.

The Home Office points out that the dramatic increase is due to more GM mice being used, but genetically-altering mice does not make them unfeeling, disposable lab tools. In fact, Animal Aid's recent report, Science Corrupted (available at animalaid.org.uk), found that GM mice suffer terribly.

The genetic modification process itself involves painful procedures including major surgery and castration, and has resulted in mice pups being born with water on the brain, cleft palate, exposed internal organs, missing limbs and severely malformed heads.

The intention of genetic tinkering is to induce in the mice cancer, heart failure, dementia and other diseases but the results fall well short on scientific grounds by being poor equivalents of the human conditions.

In addition to the suffering caused by the deliberately induced afflictions, some mice face further torments such as being poisoned, injected with acid, or given electric shocks.

And all for what? Time and time again it has been proven that therapies that work effectively in GM mice ‘models' fail when administered to human patients.

Researchers must abandon archaic animal tests and adopt progressive, human-based science instead, for the benefit of people and animals.

CLAUDIA TARRY Animal Aid Tonbridge, Kent