Anybody can call the Liveline: it's there to get people talking about the issues that concern them. The programme doesn't do celebrity interviews or promote new movies, but occasionally a famous person can be heard talking to host Joe Duffy about something that's close to their heart. This was the case on Monday, when Booker Prize-winning author John Banville spoke to Joe about the news that Trinity College Dublin has experimented on more than 110,000 live animals over the past four years.
"I'm told that vivisection is of no consequence, that they don't really need it, certainly not in this day and age."
The novelist had protested before about vivisection in Trinity, only to be rebuked by a professor (stick to your writing, he was told) and, he says, for experiments on animals to increase thereafter. Banville twice challenged the scientists to back up their claim that vivisection is painless by proving it beyond doubt:
"If, as the vivisectionists assure us, the animals don't suffer, then why don't they volunteer themselves?"
Joe asked him if he had his tongue in his cheek, but Banville assured him that he did not. He was dispirited by the reaction to his previous protest – a letter to the Irish Times – but reiterated to Joe that it was his belief that humans should be more caring when it comes to animals:
"We are the most highly evolved animal species on the planet. It is our duty, therefore, to take care of less-evolved species."
Nature is cruel and ruthless, Banville told Joe, but humans have supposedly risen above this need for cruelty and should not visit it on other animals. He asked Joe to keep on at Trinity because, he said, Joe's voice is stronger than his.
You can hear more from John Banville and listen back to the rest of Liveline here.