Dear Dr. Zerhouni and Dr. Bravo,
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards some $16.5 million in grants for
nicotine experiments on animals. This figure covers research in
fetal and newborn animals. The total price tag for nicotine animal studies is much
higher. Please end this wasteful use of tax dollars now.
I urge NIH to invest in education, prevention and smoking cessation. Please address
the exclusively human behaviors behind nicotine addiction, rather than squander money
on animal experiments.
We already know smoking harms fetuses and promotes cancer of the lungs, larynx,
tongue, salivary glands, pharynx, and esophagus. We
understand its link to coronary heart disease, strokes, and pulmonary illness. We
recognize smoking is very addictive in humans.
Animals acquire nicotine intravenously. Humans inhale it. Animals get mass doses in
brief intervals, while people use small amounts over long
periods.
Nonetheless, Eliot Spindel of Oregon Health and Science University receives millions
to dose pregnant monkeys with nicotine via pumps
surgically embedded in their backs. Babies are excised during different developmental
phases so experimenters can dissect their lungs. Since
1992, Spindel has failed to produce data that can't be gleaned from human clinical
studies. Yet NIH intends to subsidize his experiments
through 2012.
At Texas A&M University, rats ingest formula laced with nicotine, at the equivalent
rate of 60 cigarettes a day. Experimenter Ursula Winzer-
Serhan then decapitates the animals to analyze their brains. Kent Pinkerton of the
University of California, Davis, confines pregnant rhesus
monkeys in smoking chambers for six-hour inhalation sessions, five days a week. At
ten weeks, their infants die by lethal injection and their
lungs are dissected.
Our tax dollars should not pay for duplicative experiments that don't apply to the
human condition. Yale University's Marina Picciotto has
collected over $15 million since 1996 to inject nicotine into the abdomens of mice
and rats. Sometimes she pours nicotine into holes carved in
the animals' skulls. Picciotto has even dangled mice by their tails from paper clips
to observe nicotine's influence on anxiety and depression.
Experimenters cannot replicate complex human drug addictions in species with
physiological, cellular, genetic and psychological attributes
vastly different than our own. Please redirect funds from old-fashioned animal
experiments to clinical and epidemiological studies,
education/prevention, and smoking termination programs.
Thank you,
