85 year old Joan Court will be fasting in support of SPEAK's campaign to stop the building of the facility. Joan Court has a professional background in nursing and midwifery. During her career as a midwife, she worked with the World Health Organisation in Pakistan, Turkey and India, where she met and was guided by Gandhi. She also worked as a child protection officer in London with the NSPCC and Central Government. Joan has been involved in the animal rights movement for the last 25 years since graduating from the University of Cambridge in 1979.

When asked why she was undertaking the hunger strike, Joan commented "I consider the cruelty involved in vivisection morally unjustified and scientifically misleading and as human beings we have a moral obligation to protect the innocent."

Joan Court, who was a prominent figure in the fight and eventual victory against the Government's and Cambridge University's plans to build Europe's largest primate lab, will be staging her protest outside the construction site to highlight what Oxford University have tried so hard to hide from the public.

Oxford University scientists and academics have been responsible for abusing animals in the name of science for decades. Many animals held in their laboratories have been repeatedly used in experiments for periods in excess of 15 years, "The Oxford Two"[1] being among them. These two macaque monkeys have been subjected to neurological experiments for many years and despite persistent requests by SPEAK for their release, Oxford University have refused to allow an independent adjudicator to determine their fate.


ENDS

Notes:

[1] · Chromatic priming in hemianopic visual fields. Alan Cowey, Prof. Dr. Petra Stoerig, Iona Hodinott-Hill. Experimental Brain Research 2003; 152:95-105.


ps to people in Oxford, please come down and show your solidarity with the Joan. She is a brave woman, showing many of us up. There will be support at all times for her, but the more the merrier.