to my vegan friends... that still smoke.
- Cigarette companies have hidden behind animal experiments for decades, trying to forget that everything we know about lung cancer and other smoking related illnesses has come from human epidemiological and clinical studies, not from animal experiments. Even though U.S. federal law does not require that tobacco products be tested on animals and even though smoking experiments on animals have been illegal in Britain since 1997, thousands of animals are still kept in restraints like smoke masks and body holders and subjected to horrific experiments every year.
At this very moment, pregnant monkeys at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center (ORPRC) are being kept in small, barren metal cages, their fetuses exposed to nicotine. Funded by the U.S. government, ORPRC experimenter Eliot Spindel acknowledges 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.
This is one of countless examples of cruel and completely unnecessary experiments. Experimenters have taken large grants from cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris; from government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health; and even from the March of Dimes, to inject animals with nicotine, force them to inhale smoke and addict them to tobacco--a substance that they would never normally encounter or imbibe if left in peace.
Other examples of smoking experiments on animals include :
* Cutting holes in beagles' throats through which the dogs are forced to breathe concentrated cigarette smoke for a year.
* Inserting electrodes into dogs' penises to measure the effect of cigarette smoke on sexual performance.
* Strapping masks to the faces of rats and monkeys and permanently restraining them to force them to breathe cigarette smoke constantly.
* Forcing dogs to be on mechanical ventilators and chronically exposed to cigarette smoke.
* Restraining Rhesus monkeys in chairs with head devices and exposing them to nicotine and caffeine to determine how caffeine and nicotine affect breathing.
Experiment after experiment attempts to prove or, even more disconcertingly, disprove, in rats, mice, hamsters, lambs, dogs, cats, monkeys, and other animals, what is already known by the medical community to be true for humans, i.e. that:
* Smoking causes cancer of the lungs, larynx, tongue, salivary glands, mouth, pharynx, and esophagus
* Smoking contributes to cancer of the bladder, kidney, pancreas, stomach, and cervix
* Smoking contributes to cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease
* 50 - 55% of all strokes in the United States are directly attributable to cigarettes smoking.
* Smoking during pregnancy hurts babies.
* Smoking is the leading cause of pulmonary illness and death in the United States, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, influenza, and pneumonia
* Smoking lowers the general body resistance to disease
* Nicotine is addictive.
Yet the experiments go on. Millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of animal lives … Imagine that money being spent on education, health services, or drug addiction treatment programs for pregnant women, instead of on cruel experiments on animals.
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