visit  http://www.vivisection-absurd.org.uk and read, read and read some more ... then when challenged you will have the answers.

I'd say mainstream thinking has already been influenced. Animal testing is now confined to a limited number of laboratories, and continuing protests ensure they remain limited, and that alternatives are continually worked on.

A quick search led to this page of links with some pro/anti views:  http://www.frame.org.uk/links/procontra.htm

Whether there really is any medical justification seems to come down a war of words/claims. The only certain thing is that vivisectionists have been responsible for the mal-treatment and unnecessary suffering of 1000s of animals, including using them even when alternatives would be justified, or for unnecessary experiments, and this overshadows the very few cases where animal testing might be beneficial.

It all comes down to money. The pharmeceutical companies love animal experiments BECAUSE they are so unreliable. Their aim is to make as much money as possible - the best way to do so is to sell as many expensive drugs as possible whilst still keeping people as ill as possible - if everyone was healthy then they wouldn't be able to profit by peddling drugs. In fact, drugs which are addictive or produce side effects which require other drugs to be taken must be the most lucrative! Preventing people from getting ill in the first place, however, for example by promoting healthy eating, exercise, or cutting down on pollution - these things will not make any money so are avoided as much as possible. Our biggest killers - cancer and heart disease - are preventable in most cases with simple lifestyle changes, but instead pharmers continue to release more drugs to help people live a little longer with these conditions.

Animal experiments allow these companies to release whatever drugs they like - "It worked on hamsters and cats so we'll start giving it to humans" - whilst allowing them to get out of giving any compensation - "But we tested it on animals and it worked! It's not out fault!". This is what happened with thalidomide, for example. Or recently, a study showed that over 50% of antidepressents on the market are no more effective than placebos - so these people are taking drugs but getting no better, whilst the pharmeceuticals are making millions out of their condition. No doubt the antidepressents seemed to work on monkeys in cages! The monkeys must have told the scientists that they felt much more cheerful being confined to barren cages in isolation after being drugged up!

Similarly, even products that are shown to be harmful to lab animal can be released because "it might not harm humans!". According to recent animal experiments, gm food causes cancer and mobile phones cause brain tumours. But these products are owned by big powerful business and bring in a lot of money! The solution? Ingore the animal experiments - "Well, dogs in cages with phones strapped to their heads 24/7 aren't similar enough to humans to warrant trying to make mobiles safer or even warning the public not to use them too much; and mice fed lots of gm potatoes can tell us nothing about what gm will do to humans, so let's continue trying to push gm onto an unwilling public and keep telling them that there is no evidence that gm is harmful".

You see, there are very strong financial reasons for continuing with animal experiments.

Animal testing has been used as a defence by a major pharamceutical company in court in the US, I believe, along the lines of 'we only tested the drug out on animals so we didn't realise there would be side effects on humans". More info may be on the Vernon Coleman site.
I can't remeber the particular case ( there may have been several - anybody out there remember?

Ok its mainstream - BBC world service - it's a new doc called 'Pills, patients, Profits' . 2nd august. might be interesting.