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First, he justifies the means retroactively by the results:
”This list of medical discoveries illustrates the point that if animals were not used none of these therapies and so many others would not exist.”
Applied in other context, the same argument is quite disturbing. Consider someone justifying war time human experimentation by pointing out the good things that came out of it. Even if something good did come out of the horrible experiments that were made on war prisoners, it doesn’t justify doing the experiments in the first place.

Just because something ethically questionnable leads to something positive doesn’t make it positive in itself.
This is common fallacy.

Secondly, I see some sort of paradox in the idea that it’s a good idea to test on, say, mice, because they are “like us” genetically (to some extent) but it’s ok to test on them because they are not like us.
We are conveniently only keeping the aspects of other animals that relate to us and not considering other aspects that make the testing questionnable: pain, sentience, pursuit of pleasure, family behaviour etc.
No, int this article, Pr. Aziz only keeps animals’ similarities to us that justify testing, not the similarities that would make it wrong.

Professor Aziz claims that human tissues and computer models are ‘inadequate’ because they ‘cannot replace a whole body’. This does not mean however that the whole body of an animal can ever model that of a human being. As regards needing the complexity of the whole body in its entirety; the greater complexity of a whole animal body, merely serves as an environment for more variables due to species differences; hence the risk is much greater for incorrect conclusions, with potential catastrophic consequences.

Animal results correlate with humans 5-25% percent of the time.This is worse than tossing a coin. A coincidental correlation of results (when this occurs) is NOT a basis for science and history, is testament to the fact that ‘animal studies’ are all too often dangerously misleading.

Professor Aziz claims that progress has come due to animal research.However several medical historian argue that key discoveries came from clinical research, obeservation of patients and autopsies. These historians include the great Hans Ruesch.

In Britain there is a ‘Safety of Medicines (Evaluation) Bill’ in Parliament.The calls for a proper comparison of animal data against data from other methods which include microdosing within humans, microfluidics chips, DNA chips along with computer modelling. Such a comparison is long overdue everywhere!

To argue against the prof one needs to attack the substantive points he makes. The ALF do not. Interesting that.

As with many things though, there are two sides. A cell biologist friend who is pro-animal testing recounted the attitude of a lecturer that “they are only animals and caring about how happy they are was stupid”. Given that they are giving their lives to save ours we should ALWAYS care about how happy they are. This is aside form the fact that stressed animals may react differently to various drugs. I also do not believe that all research on animals, despite the cost and the regulations, is performed because it is essential.

I would not however advocate for reduction in animal testing as I am not qualified to say what is and is not essential. I do think that more education in ethics AND long term (i.e. several hours per week for at least 6 months) direct exposure to living animals should be required for all researchers using animals. If nothing else it would mean they can put a living ‘face’ to the animal they are intending to kill.