I have just visited a disturbing monument to the bullying that anti-vivisection activists have meted out to businesses on whose collaboration scientists depend to conduct life-saving research. It is the skeleton of a new animal research laboratory for Oxford university, abandoned last summer by Montpellier, a contractor, following a campaign of intimidation against it.

Building should resume soon, David Holmes, the university's registrar told me, when I dropped in on him. With a new, unnamed, contractor on site, the work should be completed by Christmas.