Attitudes on animal experimentation shift dramatically when people are told about the potential medical benefits, according to results of a major new poll.

Sixty four per cent of a representative sample of 2009 people in Britain aged 15 years and over disagreed with the view that scientists should be allowed to conduct any experiment on animals, and only 24%agreed. However, when told that animal experiments might hasten development of treatments for life threatening diseases, such as leukaemia and AIDS, there was a huge …