After years on the receiving end of a vociferous and occasionally violent campaign against animal experimentation, the medical research industry yesterday began a fightback against the anti-vivisection lobby.

In the past two years a number of animal rights campaigners have successfully used direct action and sporadic acts of violence to scare City investors away from medical research, and portray the profession as butchers rather than responsible scientists.

Speaking at the launch of a series of publications intended to put the case for humane use of animals in medical research, Mark Matfield, director of the Research Defence Society, said it was time the industry made its case more forcefully inface of threats of violence.

"There is a real fear about being targeted by the animal rights movement," he said. "There may be risk involved in speaking out, but people like myself, with a high profile ... should lead by example."

In the past two years Dr Matfield has received death threats from the Animal Liberation Front, had his car vandalised and had protesters host a "picnic" outside his house.

Last February Brian Cass, managing director of Huntingdon Life Sciences, Europe's largest contract research laboratory, was attacked with a baseball bat. Last November three animal rights activists were jailed after orchestrating a campaign of harassment aimed at closing HLS.

Nancy Rothwell, a research professor at Manchester University who has also received death threats, said the "misinformation" of the anti-vivisection lobby had often gone unchallenged for fear of reprisals.

"It is important that we are challenged about the research we carry out, but unfortunately the minority who take extreme action, like sending death threats, stifle that debate. We have been too apologetic in this country to make the case, but we have also been frightened because of the threat of physical violence."

Professor Rothwell said it was crucial that alternatives to animal experiments were developed, including computer modelling and test tube research, but said she could not foresee a day when no animal experimentation was necessary. "I doubt the public will ever take medicines which have not been tested on animals," she said.

Matt Gregory, a veterinary surgeon, said that the security threat posed by protesters detracted from welfare of animals. "I would love to give the dogs I work with an outdoor run to play in, but that is a security nightmare. We operate in a very restrictive climate."

The RDS publications mark a change of tack by the industry in its attempts to combat the often sensational campaigns of the animal rights lobby.

A glossy brochure entitled The Hope, the Challenge, the People, features short interviews with six people touched by the industry, from a teenager suffering from cystic fibrosis to a veterinary surgeon working with researchers to reduce the discomfort of animals being tested. All of those featured said they had been nervous about putting their name to the publication, but felt it was the right thing to do.

Tam Dalyell, vice-president of the RDS, praised the advances that had been achieved in medical science in his lifetime that would have been impossible without animal experiments.

"As well as the development of pacemakers, open heart surgery, vaccines for polio, the eradication of whooping cough, smallpox and tuberculosis, we are seeing advances against cancer, Aids, Alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy," he said.

"None of this would be possible without animal research. It is clear that if animal research were hindered, our ability to stop these diseases would be hindered. That cannot be tolerated."