When Thomas Bromley's girlfriend died of an incurable genetic disease his grief led him to take a controversial stance.

Five years ago, despite the ongoing barrage of anti-vivisection protest, Mr Bromley joined the patients' group Seriously Ill for Medical Research (SIMR), which actively backs testing on animals.

Mr Bromley was not put off when the group's founder, Andrew Blake, who is confined to a wheelchair, was the victim of hate mail.

Nor was he swayed by the jeers when he took his placard and campaigned outside the last two Labour Party conferences in Brighton.

His aim, and that of SIMR, is to give an alternative view of the reasons for vivisection rather than concentrating on the often seen and harrowing images of experimentation on lab animals.

In his view "people are more important than animals".

He says the only option to find a cure for diseases like the one his 20-year-old girlfriend, Lisa Grey, suffered from is to research the illness on living beings.

Mr Bromley, from Littlehampton, said: "My girlfriend died from a rare disease called Friedreich's ataxia, which attacks the central nervous system.

"You need to use a living body to test the central nervous system, lungs and blood flow. I support the use of animals in medical research where necessary.

"When Lisa died five years ago it was devastating. There was no cure.

"She was diagnosed at 11 when she started falling over. One of the symptoms is clumsiness and it got progressively worse.

"By the time I met her, when she was 19, she was in a wheelchair."

Mr Bromley's support for animal testing also stems from his fear of one of Britain's most prolific diseases, cancer.

His mother recently had breast cancer and Mr Bromley feels the only way to help future sufferers is to find a cure and test it.

He said: "My aim is to provide the forgotten voice of medical progress. In the group we feel people are more important than animals. The research should be carried out humanely but there is a need for it."

SIMR was founded by Mr Blake in 1991 as a reaction against anti-vivisectionist extremists who planted a bomb under the car of a medical researcher in Bristol.