World Week for Animals in Laboratories

I almost forgot to mention that this week is World Week for Animals in Laboratories! How remiss. Here's a quick five-minute activity to help our fellow beings who are RIGHT THIS MINUTE living lives of fear, agony, and suffering beyond words, in a cruel laboratory. THERE IS NO EXCUSE OR JUSTIFICATION FOR ANIMAL TORTURE!

From IDA:

IDA's Up in Smoke campaign highlights the futility and inhumanity of nicotine experiments on newborn and pregnant animals. These are some examples:

- Since 1992, Elliot Spindel at Oregon Health and Science University delivers steady doses of nicotine to pregnant monkeys through pumps implanted into their backs. The babies are cut out of their mothers' wombs in order to dissect their lungs.

- At Texas A&M University, Ursula Winzer-Serhan forces baby rats to consume nicotine mixed with baby formula at the equivalent of three packs of cigarettes a day. After about a week of being fed nicotine, the babies' heads are cut off and their brains are dissected.

- Researcher Kent Pinkerton at University of California, Davis, subjects pregnant rhesus monkeys to smoking chambers where they are forced to inhale cigarette smoke for six hours each day, five days a week. When the infants are ten weeks old, they are killed by lethal injection and their lungs are dissected for analysis.

Over the past five years, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has given at least $16.5 million to this category of research. This appalling figure does not reflect the total cost of all nicotine research on animals, only that which focuses on nicotine's effect on fetal and newborn development.

Animal researchers staunchly defend these experiments as necessary for improving maternal and newborn health. But answers don't come from animal studies. After decades of animal studies, we still have not solved the problem of smoking during pregnancy. Only education, public health outreach, and prevention programs can address the human behaviors that lead to smoking.

Please call and/or email the following individuals today to politely urge the NIH to stop funding nicotine experiments on animals and instead redirect funds towards prevention, education and smoking cessation programs. Then follow up with a letter, fax and/or personal email:

Elias Zerhouni, M.D.Director, National Institutes of HealthBuilding 1, Shannon Bldg RM 1261 Center Drive, MSC 0148Bethesda, MD 20892-0148 Email: ez26y@nih.govTel: (301) 496-2433 Fax: (301) 402-2700

Norka Ruiz Bravo, Ph.D. Deputy Director: Office of Extramural Research 1 Center Drive, MSC 0152 (Room 144)Bethesda, MD 20892-0152 Email: ruizbran@od.nih.gov Tel: (301) 496-1096Fax: (301) 402-3469