Robert Jarrett is pleased the ban on primate experiments is not to be lifted but rightly adds a cautionary note that the chief executive of the Medical Research Council, Colin Blakemore, is attempting to have that ban lifted (Letters, June 9).

I agree. But while Robert argues against vivisection scientifically, it can also be opposed ethically.

Professor Blakemore may well succeed in getting the ban lifted, given our Prime Minister has made a volte-face on a pre-election promise to set up a Royal Commission to investigate the validity of animal testing.

Tony Blair has now gone public in his support for the use of animals in biomedical research and, more importantly, the building of the Oxford University animal laboratory, where primates with DNA which is 96 per cent identical to human may eventually be used for medical experimentation.

This is no surprise to me. The political left has always placed the highest value on dispassionate debate and reason. There is no room for sentiment - yet appropriate compassion is an important ingredient of good citizenship.

In her 2005 Christmas Day speech, The Queen said: "There may be an instinct in all of us to help others."

Our morality stems from our emotional responses to others.

Emotion is a constant continuum between human and non-human animals. Being an emotional animal enables us to be moral. Darwin himself insisted upon continuity between animal and human experience and recent studies in cognitive ethology have supported the intuitive belief that the difference between human and animal minds is, at most, one of degree rather than kind.

Thus, if it is morally wrong to forcibly experiment on humans, it is also morally wrong to forcibly experiment on primates.

-David Hammond, Hassocks