Animal Experiments

“It is wrong to treat weaker human beings, especially those who are lacking normal human intelligence, as tools or renewable resources or models or commodities, then it cannot be right, therefore, to treat other animals as tools, models and the like.” (“Animals in Research - Issues and Conflicts”; Page 88. Tom Regan, “The Case for Animal Rights”; University of California Press, 1983). The United States Federal law does not require any tobacco products to be tested on animal, and it has been illegal to test animals since 1997 in Britain but experiments on thousands animals are still being performed on animals. Also for decades now all cigarette companies have hid behind their animal experiments. In ignorance that everything we have come to know about smoking related illnesses and lung cancer has come from human clinical studies. Not the experimentation of helpless animals.

How are animal experiments at all helpful to humans anyway? There is not at all an absolute guarantee that the product being tested will be safe or effective for humans based on the animals reaction. Results from animal experimentation tells us about the animals reaction not how we will react. It is proven biology, animals just don’t get the same diseases we do! Ciba Geigy, a major drug company admitted that 95% of substances that are passed safe in animal studies are immediately rejected by human studies, What is more intriguingly shocking is that scientist keep their experiments so secretive. Someone who is working at a lab and exposes what takes place there has a great possibility to be imprisoned for up to two years.

The experiment results are worse than random guess work. For example aspirin causes birth defects in rats and mice yet for humans is helpful. Aspirin and parocetamol is very poisonous to cats, but beneficial to us. Yet another, penicillin which has the ability to save the life of many humans is extremely poisonous and deadly to guinea pigs and rabbits. “Rene’ Descartes a 17th century French mathematician and philosopher wrote that animals were nothing more than “cleverly built machines.” no feelings, or conscious responses. No animal could be compared to a human in any way.” (“Animals in Research - Issues and Conflicts”; by J. J. McCoy. “An Impact Book”; Page 9). Her words are the raw truth in a way. From my perception yes no animal could ever compare to a human being, but animals do have feelings and they do respond back to us. When an animal feels pain don’t they react through voice and body communication, yes they do. Those few facts though are not the only reasons animal experiments show no relevance to me. They are cruel and inhumane. Loving animals who beg for attention are denied any companionship, comfort, or stimulation, they are just experiments, nothing more.

Before I expose to you the horrifying details of what exactly is being done to these animals during the experiments, I will summarize some of the many procedures performed on animals of all kinds. Experimenters injects these animals with nicotine, force them to inhale smoke, addict them to tobacco; which they would never normally encounter in their natural peaceful environment. To make it able for them to fully inhale and breath in smoke for a year or more they cut hole in the throats of thus animals. In testing the measure of the effect of cigarette smoking on human sexual performance, experimenters insert electrodes into dogs penises. Forcing animals to be on mechanical ventilators and chronically exposed to cigarette smoke. To determine how caffeine and nicotine affect breathing they restrain the animals in chains and head devices and expose them to exaggerated amounts of nicotine and caffeine. The United States Government funds, with our money, the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center to keep pregnant monkeys in small metal cages and expose their fetuses to nicotine. They are acknowledging the effects of maternal smoking, this is a five year study about smoking during pregnancy which is already well established. After killing the baby monkeys the experimenter dissects their lungs.

Animal experimentation started early in the 1950's where beagles where put in face masks which then forced them to inhale and exhale smoke from cigarettes, while they were in an unnatural upright position side by side. The mechanical device dropped a lit cigarette into the air line as soon as an old one was used.

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