Sunday 4 August 2013 | By: Amandine Ronny Montegerai

Every cigarette funds cruel animal testing!


''Animal testing was used by politicians to avoid taking action against tobacco companies. Decades of vague and inconclusive results enabled them to perpetuate confusion and prevent doctors from giving authoritative warnings. Researchers spent decades forcing beagles to smoke cigarettes and painting tar on the backs of mice (although there were already clear links between tobacco and human cancer). Physicians were encouraged to keep quiet while researchers spent years performing animal tests!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwFilaK8q9g

In tobacco inhalation experiments, dogs, primates, guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, lambs, chickens, rodents and other animals are mutilated, pumped full of nicotine and forced to inhale smoke. Dogs are forced to inhale cigarette smoke on mechanical ventilators. In one experiment, researchers cut holes in the throats of beagles' and forced them to breathe concentrated cigarette smoke for an entire year.

Other tests have involved inserting electrodes into dogs' penises to measure the effect of cigarette smoke on sexual performance. Masks are strapped on to the faces of rats and mice while cigarette smoke is pumped directly into noses. Rhesus monkeys are confined to chairs with head devices, while being exposed to nicotine and caffeine to study effects on breathing. In 1996, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded 123 grants totaling $28,099,418 for tobacco research, with 40% ($10,276,391) slated for animal testing.

At the time, 27 human studies had already established a clear link between smoking and cancer. Today, in spite of reams of data establishing the tobacco/cancer link, the industry still conducts tobacco testing on animals, spending millions of dollars and killing hundreds of thousands of animals in an attempt to manipulate data. Tobacco testing on animals has been illegal in Britain since 1997.''

Source: SourceWatch

Petitions:
http://forcechange.com/21276/stop-needlessly-testing-tobacco-products-on-animals
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/197/616/290