We have the strong ethical position that the use of animals is never acceptable on moral and ethical grounds. We think that it's highly possible that the use of animals in the past may even have delayed effective treatment, and that by the utilisation of alternative methods we may be further on in our use of solutions which have been missed by continuing to use animal models.

The whole point of our organisation is that animals need not suffer for science, and by combining the latest developing techniques with compassion for other species we can continue to make progress. Our wide-ranging cutting edge research projects are dedicated to the replacement of animals in the scientific method.

One of our points of concern over the work of the Research Defence Society is that it believes the use of animals in research is necessary.

There are a wide range of alternatives, including tissue cultures, the participation of human volunteers in ethical studies, post mortem studies and the application of new technologies, such as computer simulations, body scanners (PET, MEG, fMRI), accelerator mass spectroscopy and genetic analysis.

There is a very poor amount of research dedicated to the replacement of animals with alternative techniques. As a small charitable trust, the Doctor Hadwen Trust gives more than the government for research into the direct replacement of animals in the research method.

All the polls that we've seen over the past few years show a 60/40 split against the use of animals in the lab amongst the public, and I think that with dedicated replacement being researched it need not happen. The way forward is to make it widely known that research of the highest standard is possible without the use of animals.

I have a personal motivation, as well as a professional one, because I am registered blind. I have a condition which is incurable, a condition for which treatment is still being tested on animals, which I am against.

Personally I don't feel this is acceptable. I'm 45 and have been told all my life that a cure is imminent. Despite animal testing I'm still waiting.

· Geoffrey Thomas is a spokesman for the Doctor Hadwen Trust, which was established in 1970 to fund medical research to replace animal experiments.