Dying for a Cigarette

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Sun, 24 Feb 2002 23:51:08 -0800

" marisa herrera " <lovenature

Dying for a Cigarette

 

Posted from another list.

 

http://www.impactpress.com/articles/febmar02/cigs2302.html

 

Dying for a Cigarette

by Heather Moore

art/Eric Spitler

 

The tobacco industry has taken a lot of heat from smokers who blame cigarette

manufacturers for their smoking-related illnesses; but if anyone has reason to

sue the big tobacco companies, it's the animals.

 

Joe Camel isn't the only animal who smokes. For decades, experimenters have

repeatedly performed inhumane and irrelevant smoking-related tests on animals.

Although animals would never normally encounter or imbibe tobacco

on their own, dogs, primates, guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, lambs, chickens,

and other animals are mutilated, pumped full of nicotine, and forced to inhale

smoke.

 

Dogs, for example, are forced to inhale cigarette smoke on mechanical

ventilators. In one experiment, vivisectors cut holes in beagles' throats and

made them breathe concentrated cigarette smoke for an entire year.

Experimenters have also inserted electrodes into dogs' penises to measure the

effect of cigarette smoke on their sexual performance. Masks are strapped on to

the faces of rats and mice and cigarette smoke is pumped directly into their

noses. Rhesus monkeys are confined to chairs with head devices and exposed to

nicotine and caffeine to determine how these substances affect breathing.

 

Pity the Primate

 

As you read this, pregnant monkeys at the federally funded Oregon Regional

Primate Research Center (ORPRC), at Oregon Health and Sciences University

(OHSU), are confined in small, barren metal cages, while their fetuses are

exposed to nicotine.

 

ORPRC experimenter Eliot Spindel has acknowledged that " the deleterious effects

of maternal smoking during pregnancy are all too well established. " Yet his

five-year study, during which he will kill the baby monkeys and

dissect their lungs, is funded with tax money through 2004.

 

ORPRC, the center that garnered headlines for " creating " ANDI, the sole survivor

of 40 embryos implanted in rhesus monkeys in an attempt to create a baby monkey

with a jellyfish gene, receives $15 million in federal tax

dollars each year to subject approximately 2,500 primates to a variety of cruel

experiments.

 

Matt Rossell, a former primate technician at ORPRC, is one of the icenter's most

outspoken critics. Rossell worked at ORPRC for more than two years and was

responsible for the psychological well being of the primates. According

to Rossell, animal technicians at ORPRC frequently made mistakes because they

were forced to rush through their jobs at an assembly line pace. The mistakes,

such as giving injections to the wrong monkeys, lead to discomfort, stress, and

incorrect data. Rossell is " convinced that no useful

scientific research could ever come out of there. "

 

Blood Money

 

Despite the wishes of Oregon voters and the wealth of data proving that

cigarettes harm people OHSU will receive an additional $200 million to expand

its research program. This money is part of the 1998 multi-state settlement

agreement in which the tobacco industry paid the state of Oregon

an initial amount of $27.5 million. The state was also rewarded a yearly

payment, which began in 2000, of between $73.6 million and $96.3 million

depending on various factors.

 

The tobacco settlement money was intended to reimburse the public for tax

dollars spent on financing public health for those afflicted with

tobacco-related illnesses. In November 2000, Oregon voters decisively defeated

two proposals for spending the tobacco settlement payments, because

they allocated little or no additional money for tobacco prevention.

 

Cigarette manufacturers and government agencies also fund smoking experiments on

animals. According to Dr. Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee

for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), in 1996 the National

Institutes of Health (NIH) funded 123 grants totaling $28,099,418 for research

focusing on cigarette smoke or nicotine. A full 40 percent of the grants

involved animal experiments, on which NIH squandered $10,276,391.

 

Dr. Barnard reports that, in 1996, U.S. taxpayers coughed up:

 

$133,132 to John C. Longhurst at the University of CaliforniaDavis to study how

nicotine affects the cardiac reflexes of cats.

 

$183,628 to Hakan W. Sundell at Tennessee's Vanderbilt University to use

mechanically ventilated lambs to study nicotine exposure and its effects on

ventilation. (Supposedly, this information relates to Sudden Infant Death

Syndrome (SIDS) in humans, although it has already been documented that maternal

smoking accounts for about 30 percent of SIDS cases.)

 

$104,214toJames R. Pauly atthe University of Kentucky, whose grant abstract

stated, " The outcome of pregnancy is adversely affected by maternal use of

tobacco products. " Nonetheless. he wanted to study the effects of nicotine

on the unborn babies of female mice.

 

$100,199 to Barry A. Trimmer at Tufts University in Massachusetts to study

nicotine-resistant tobacco hornworms, who mainly eat tobacco plants.

 

Even health charities, such as the March of Dimes and the American Cancer

Society, use donor contributions to impose tobacco addiction on animals.

 

An Industry Smokescreen

 

Despite the massive amounts of money spent on animal studies, everything we know

about cancer and other smoking related illnesses has come from human

epidemiological (population) and I clinical studies, not from animal

experiments. Ironically, animal experiments misled the public for years because

rats, mice, dogs, and other animals do not develop lung cancer as humans do.

 

The tobacco industry used this misleading data to its advantage for years,

claiming that smoking did not cause lung cancer in humans. According to the

California-based animal rights group In Defense of Animals (IDA), one

experimenter reported in a leading medical journal in 1957 that " the failure of

many investigators to induce experimental cancers, except in a handful of cases,

during fifty years of trying, casts serious doubt on the validity of the

cigarette-lung cancer theory. " However, 27 human studies had already

established a clear link between smoking and cancer.

 

There are now reams of data on the link between smoking and cancer, but the

tobacco industry is still desperately grasping for anything that might convince

the public that smoking isn't dangerous.

 

It's time for the tobacco industry to pull its head out of the cloud of smoke

and face the facts: Smoking causes cancer. It is also the leading cause of

pulmonary illness and death in the United States, including chronic obstructive

pulmonary disease, asthma, influenza, and pneumonia. In addition, smoking

contributes to cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and birth

defects.

 

Yet the pointless experiments continue. Millions of dollars and hundreds of

thousands of animal lives are wasted on experiments that are so cruel and

unnecessary they have been illegal in Britain since 1997. U.S. federal law

does not even require tobacco products to be tested on animals. The money wasted

on worthless animal experiments could be much better used for education, health

services, or drug addiction treatment programs for

pregnant women.

 

Snuffing Out Animal Experiments

 

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is out to light a fire under

tobacco companies until they snuff out animal tests for good. PETA is currently

targeting Philip Morris, the number one cigarette manufacturer in

the country. Using a parody of Philip Morris' Marlboro cigarettes, PETA

developed a billboard advertisement proclaiming, " Murderer, " to warn smokers

that Philip Morris kills animals in cruel laboratory experiments.

 

In April 2001, PETA introduced a shareholder's resolution asking Phillip Morris

to quit funding experiments on animals. The resolution would also have required

the company to direct that its tobacco settlement contributions to the Council

for Tobacco Research or other research organization be used only for non-animal

research.

 

The resolution served its purpose it generated a lot of discussion about smoking

experiments on animals. PETA's matchbooks, advising, " Don't get burned by Philip

Morris. They're using your money to hurt animals, " were

distributed at the shareholder's meeting and gave many people cause to

reconsider their support of the tobacco giant.

 

Apparently, Phillip Morris doesn't take kindly to criticism. The company

recently announced plans to change its name to Altria, perhaps to distance

itself from anti-smoking backlash. (It's been reported that Phillip Morris has

already bought Web sites with names like AltriaKills.com so that its

opponents would not get to them first.) But Phillip Morris doesn't need to

change its name, it needs to change its horrible practice of testing on animals.

 

People should realize that if they smoke, they not only put their life at risk,

they also help pay to inflict suffering on innocent animals. The best way for

smokers to help animals is to butt out cigarettes for good. Both animals and

people will breathe a little easier. .

 

Heather Moore is a staff writer for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

(PETA).