The 'smoking Beagles'
An investigation by Mary Beith who worked in Britain’s animal labs to get these disturbing facts in 1975
THIS is the price of smoking pleasure. Rows of beagle dogs, trussed up and masked, and each compelled to smoke up to 30 cigarettes a day.
Smoking is not their pleasure. More of a misery.
But the chain-smoking beagles have to puff away relentlessly. As the stubs burn out, new cigarettes are promptly inserted by lab assistants in the grotesque “smoking masks” attached to these unhappy animals.
Some of the dogs go on smoking for up to three years. Then they are killed. All, of course, in the name of research. In this case research into the human pastime known as smoking.
It is part of tests being carried out by Britain’s largest company, Imperial Chemical Industries, on their new “safe” cigarette.
I observed this incredible scene while taking part with other Sunday People investigators in the first-ever probe into animal research laboratories.
A sharp increase in experiments has followed the stringent regulation ordered by the Government’s Dunlop Committee on drug safety.
Ten animals every minute are being used in licensed experiments for research.
Because Britain’s animal researchers do not welcome public attention much of our startling information was gathered by investigators obtaining jobs as laboratory assistants without disclosing their identities.
But nothing we saw was more pitiful than the chain-smoking dogs.
I.C.I. and the massive Imperial Tobacco Company have joined in investing £13 million on a new factory where the cellulose-based “New Smoking Material” – N.S.M. for short – will be used in cigarettes to reduce the health risk in human smokers.
At I.C.I.’s “Dog Toxicity Unit” at Alderley Park, Cheshire, where I took a job, there are 48 beagles smoking variations of ordinary tobacco and N.S.M.
One batch of 12, who have been smoking for two years, are expected to smoke 30 a day. Others smoke only 10 a day.
PART of my job was to get the dogs trussed in fabric slings like strait-jackets.
Their heads were restrained by locking two boards in place, like medieval stocks.
The dogs were then lifted on trolleys to the smoking platform, and the masks, valves and tubes were fixed to their faces.
WE HAD to adjust electronic valves which control the amount of amoke and clear air inhaled by the dogs.
WE HAD to watch flashing lights on the control box which indicate the dog’s breathing and tolerance of the smoke.
WE HAD to help re-fit masks where dogs had struggled free. One tried to bite my hand as I put the muzzle on.
WE HAD to hurry along dogs who got behind with their daily “ration” by adjusting the valves so that the beagles were forced to inhale more smoke to speed up the process.
I was constantly reminded to carry out this procedure.
And when they have finished their smoking stint the dogs are killed and sent to pathology laboratories to be cut up and examined for signs of cancer, liver or heart diseases or other possible effects.
Some of the dogs have acquired a smoker’s cough judging from the sounds I heard.
Some make muffled whines and cries behind their masks. One difficult dog, Buster, had to have an attendant with him all the time. I saw two attendants restraining him, one smacking him with a plastic ruler when he got restless.
One the whole, attendants were sympathetic with the dogs. But naturally the quieter dogs were favourites.
One dog, Rhumbo, never took part in experiments because he was adopted as a pet. A woman attendant told me: “We shouldn’t really keep him here, since he’s not being used. But we keep quiet about him.”
When not strapped to their trolleys, the dogs were confined in rows of small kennels and got very little exercise.
I NEVER saw any of them go outside for a romp. Yet some of the dogs, which came from the I.C.I. breeding unit as puppies, were barely nine months old.
When I was introduced to the smoking unit the supervisor told me: “Some people may not like the idea of dogs being used for experiments but millions of pounds have been invested in the project.”
And the personnel officer told me that rats, guinea-pigs and monkeys were also used in the I.C.I. labs’ experiments on a number of products, including decorating materials.
An I.C.I. spokesman pointed out that the experiments were under veterinary supervision and Home Office rules.
When it was suggested to him that the dogs were being used for research into human pleasure, rather than pure medical research, he said that I.C.I. recognised that smoking was a national phenomenon, whether one liked it or not, and they were trying to produce a substance that would reduce the health danger.
Evidence from Sunday People investigators is being studied by the R.S.P.C.A.’s special committee on animal experiments. Chairman Dr. Kit Pedlar, shown pictures of the smoking tests, said: “To subject dogs to this is unnecessary. We are most concerned at the number of experiments taking place where there is no direct medical benefit.”
The committee’s research officer, Mr. David Pennock, checks published papers on experiments and makes formal visits to research centres. “But he does not penetrate research centres under cover,” said Dr. Pedlar.
HER ORDERSEXTRACTS from the laboratory attendants’ instruction leaflet, given to reporter Mary Beith when she took a job at I.C.I.’s dog smoking unit:
SUNDAY PEOPLE, January 26, 1975
Smoking is not their pleasure. More of a misery.
But the chain-smoking beagles have to puff away relentlessly. As the stubs burn out, new cigarettes are promptly inserted by lab assistants in the grotesque “smoking masks” attached to these unhappy animals.
Some of the dogs go on smoking for up to three years. Then they are killed. All, of course, in the name of research. In this case research into the human pastime known as smoking.
It is part of tests being carried out by Britain’s largest company, Imperial Chemical Industries, on their new “safe” cigarette.
I observed this incredible scene while taking part with other Sunday People investigators in the first-ever probe into animal research laboratories.
A sharp increase in experiments has followed the stringent regulation ordered by the Government’s Dunlop Committee on drug safety.
Ten animals every minute are being used in licensed experiments for research.
Because Britain’s animal researchers do not welcome public attention much of our startling information was gathered by investigators obtaining jobs as laboratory assistants without disclosing their identities.
But nothing we saw was more pitiful than the chain-smoking dogs.
I.C.I. and the massive Imperial Tobacco Company have joined in investing £13 million on a new factory where the cellulose-based “New Smoking Material” – N.S.M. for short – will be used in cigarettes to reduce the health risk in human smokers.
At I.C.I.’s “Dog Toxicity Unit” at Alderley Park, Cheshire, where I took a job, there are 48 beagles smoking variations of ordinary tobacco and N.S.M.
One batch of 12, who have been smoking for two years, are expected to smoke 30 a day. Others smoke only 10 a day.
PART of my job was to get the dogs trussed in fabric slings like strait-jackets.
Their heads were restrained by locking two boards in place, like medieval stocks.
The dogs were then lifted on trolleys to the smoking platform, and the masks, valves and tubes were fixed to their faces.
WE HAD to adjust electronic valves which control the amount of amoke and clear air inhaled by the dogs.
WE HAD to watch flashing lights on the control box which indicate the dog’s breathing and tolerance of the smoke.
WE HAD to help re-fit masks where dogs had struggled free. One tried to bite my hand as I put the muzzle on.
WE HAD to hurry along dogs who got behind with their daily “ration” by adjusting the valves so that the beagles were forced to inhale more smoke to speed up the process.
I was constantly reminded to carry out this procedure.
And when they have finished their smoking stint the dogs are killed and sent to pathology laboratories to be cut up and examined for signs of cancer, liver or heart diseases or other possible effects.
Some of the dogs have acquired a smoker’s cough judging from the sounds I heard.
Some make muffled whines and cries behind their masks. One difficult dog, Buster, had to have an attendant with him all the time. I saw two attendants restraining him, one smacking him with a plastic ruler when he got restless.
One the whole, attendants were sympathetic with the dogs. But naturally the quieter dogs were favourites.
One dog, Rhumbo, never took part in experiments because he was adopted as a pet. A woman attendant told me: “We shouldn’t really keep him here, since he’s not being used. But we keep quiet about him.”
When not strapped to their trolleys, the dogs were confined in rows of small kennels and got very little exercise.
I NEVER saw any of them go outside for a romp. Yet some of the dogs, which came from the I.C.I. breeding unit as puppies, were barely nine months old.
When I was introduced to the smoking unit the supervisor told me: “Some people may not like the idea of dogs being used for experiments but millions of pounds have been invested in the project.”
And the personnel officer told me that rats, guinea-pigs and monkeys were also used in the I.C.I. labs’ experiments on a number of products, including decorating materials.
An I.C.I. spokesman pointed out that the experiments were under veterinary supervision and Home Office rules.
When it was suggested to him that the dogs were being used for research into human pleasure, rather than pure medical research, he said that I.C.I. recognised that smoking was a national phenomenon, whether one liked it or not, and they were trying to produce a substance that would reduce the health danger.
Evidence from Sunday People investigators is being studied by the R.S.P.C.A.’s special committee on animal experiments. Chairman Dr. Kit Pedlar, shown pictures of the smoking tests, said: “To subject dogs to this is unnecessary. We are most concerned at the number of experiments taking place where there is no direct medical benefit.”
The committee’s research officer, Mr. David Pennock, checks published papers on experiments and makes formal visits to research centres. “But he does not penetrate research centres under cover,” said Dr. Pedlar.
HER ORDERSEXTRACTS from the laboratory attendants’ instruction leaflet, given to reporter Mary Beith when she took a job at I.C.I.’s dog smoking unit:
- “The ability to place the right inference on the behaviour of animals under test is most important and in cases of emergency it is essential to act quickly to prevent the death of a dog which is likely to be worth several thousands of pounds in research effort……”
- “The operative must constantly observe and be sure the dog is comfortable…Sometimes in the event of the dog becoming particularly distressed she may have to take emergency action, i.e., cardiac massage.”
- “The control boxes and smoking chambers must receive constant attention making sure the valves are not sticking. This is important as the amount of air available for the dog to breathe is regulated by this piece of equipment.
SUNDAY PEOPLE, January 26, 1975
Mary Beith, the journalist who broke the 'smoking beagles' story died at age 73
Mary Beith, who died 13 May, 2012 was responsible for one of the most memorable newspaper front pages in the history of popular journalism
She was the undercover reporter who took pictures of dogs being forced to inhale cigarette smoke, resulting in an iconic 1975 People splash: "The smoking beagles."
The animals were being used in an experiment to test a new (allegedly) "safe" cigarette.
The story behind the story was a classic example of investigative journalism - a mixture of determination, chutzpah, good luck and comedy.
Beith, then working for The People in Manchester, was asked by its investigations supremo, Laurie Manifold, to see if she could obtain a job in an ICI animal-testing laboratory.
She chose the Macclesfield lab for the simple reason that it was close to her home and, in spite of lacking insurance cards, managed to land the job.
Part of her work involved trussing the dogs into fabric slings, essentially straitjackets.
"Their heads were restrained by locking boards in place like medieval stocks," she later wrote.
"The dogs were then lifted on to trolleys to the smoking platforms and the masks, valves and tubes were fixed to their faces."
Some of the 48 beagles used in the experiment were expected to smoke as many as 30 cigarettes in a day.
Beith was equipped with a spy-style camera and snapped a number of shots of the chain-smoking beagles. But when she took the film back to the office the dark room staff laughed at her efforts.
One told her: "The next time you take pics of those beagles, Mary, please be sure to take your finger off the lens!"
"It was a very small camera," she told me in an a couple of years ago.
So the following day she went back to the lab and got the shot that you can see above, the one that shocked People readers.
In all, Beith spent seven days at the lab in the summer of 1974. But, she said, "the paper then sat on the story for around six months."
It caused a sensation when it was finally published in 1975 and Beith won an award as campaigning journalist of the year.
Though this was her best-known exposé by far, Beith carried out many other investigations, including the abuse of the elderly in psychiatric institutions. Her daughter, Alison, remembered her mother dressing in a nurse's uniform for that assignment. She was also sent on several assignments to Northern Ireland.
Mary Beith was born in 1938 in London. Her father, Freddie, spent some years as a journalist before he became a civil servant.
She went to boarding school in Surrey and was briefly a teacher before taking a journalism course and initially working for the Bournemouth Times. While there she met and married a Bournemouth Echo reporter, Roger Scott. They later had three children.
After moving to Macclesfield, she took a reporting job with The People at its Manchester office.
In the late 1970s, following the break-up of her marriage, she moved to Glasgow and joined the Sunday Mail.
She then moved to the Highlands and began freelancing, mainly for The Scotsman, and much of her work was concentrated on archaeology and botany.
She eventually settled in Sutherland, at the mouth of the Kyle of Tongue, and in 1989 started to write a fortnightly column for the West Highland Free Press, mainly on the history of Gaelic medicine.
It led to he writing a book Healing Threads, Traditional Medicines of the Highlands and Islands. She became immersed in Gaelic education and also wrote a couple of children's books. One, The Magic Apple Tree, was published in Gaelic.
In view of the smoking beagles story it was perhaps, ironic that she was an habitual smoker throughout her life. Diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer, she managed to outlive the doctors' original prognosis.
She is survived by her children - Alison, Andrew and Fiona - and eight grandchildren.
Mary Beith, journalist. Born 22 May 1938, in London. Died 13 May 2012, in Sutherland, Scotland
Source: The Guardian
The animals were being used in an experiment to test a new (allegedly) "safe" cigarette.
The story behind the story was a classic example of investigative journalism - a mixture of determination, chutzpah, good luck and comedy.
Beith, then working for The People in Manchester, was asked by its investigations supremo, Laurie Manifold, to see if she could obtain a job in an ICI animal-testing laboratory.
She chose the Macclesfield lab for the simple reason that it was close to her home and, in spite of lacking insurance cards, managed to land the job.
Part of her work involved trussing the dogs into fabric slings, essentially straitjackets.
"Their heads were restrained by locking boards in place like medieval stocks," she later wrote.
"The dogs were then lifted on to trolleys to the smoking platforms and the masks, valves and tubes were fixed to their faces."
Some of the 48 beagles used in the experiment were expected to smoke as many as 30 cigarettes in a day.
Beith was equipped with a spy-style camera and snapped a number of shots of the chain-smoking beagles. But when she took the film back to the office the dark room staff laughed at her efforts.
One told her: "The next time you take pics of those beagles, Mary, please be sure to take your finger off the lens!"
"It was a very small camera," she told me in an a couple of years ago.
So the following day she went back to the lab and got the shot that you can see above, the one that shocked People readers.
In all, Beith spent seven days at the lab in the summer of 1974. But, she said, "the paper then sat on the story for around six months."
It caused a sensation when it was finally published in 1975 and Beith won an award as campaigning journalist of the year.
Though this was her best-known exposé by far, Beith carried out many other investigations, including the abuse of the elderly in psychiatric institutions. Her daughter, Alison, remembered her mother dressing in a nurse's uniform for that assignment. She was also sent on several assignments to Northern Ireland.
Mary Beith was born in 1938 in London. Her father, Freddie, spent some years as a journalist before he became a civil servant.
She went to boarding school in Surrey and was briefly a teacher before taking a journalism course and initially working for the Bournemouth Times. While there she met and married a Bournemouth Echo reporter, Roger Scott. They later had three children.
After moving to Macclesfield, she took a reporting job with The People at its Manchester office.
In the late 1970s, following the break-up of her marriage, she moved to Glasgow and joined the Sunday Mail.
She then moved to the Highlands and began freelancing, mainly for The Scotsman, and much of her work was concentrated on archaeology and botany.
She eventually settled in Sutherland, at the mouth of the Kyle of Tongue, and in 1989 started to write a fortnightly column for the West Highland Free Press, mainly on the history of Gaelic medicine.
It led to he writing a book Healing Threads, Traditional Medicines of the Highlands and Islands. She became immersed in Gaelic education and also wrote a couple of children's books. One, The Magic Apple Tree, was published in Gaelic.
In view of the smoking beagles story it was perhaps, ironic that she was an habitual smoker throughout her life. Diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer, she managed to outlive the doctors' original prognosis.
She is survived by her children - Alison, Andrew and Fiona - and eight grandchildren.
Mary Beith, journalist. Born 22 May 1938, in London. Died 13 May 2012, in Sutherland, Scotland
Source: The Guardian
The allegedly "safe" cigarette
The American Cancer Society (ACS) was an early promulgator of the link between smoking and cancer in the landmark epidemiological studies of 1952 and 1959. However, the tobacco industry was able to delay widespread acceptance of this link largely because animals in studies did not develop cancer.
Overview & history
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.
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 (see picture at the bottom of the page). 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. According to a 1957 medical journal:
Smoking beagle experiments
Dr. Oscar Auerbach
At one point, Dr. Oscar Auerbach "trained" 86 beagles to smoke in experiments where 12 developed cancer. It was said to be the first instance of tumors produced in large animals exposed to tobacco smoke. However, it is not clear why this particular study was given validity over previous studies in large (and small) animals, which failed to produce cancer. The American Cancer Society, which financed much of the research, announced that the results "effectively refute contentions by cigarette-manufacturing interests that there was no cigarette-cancer link." The response of the Tobacco Institute, an industry trade group, was that it was "impossible" to draw conclusions from work on dogs subject to such "stressful" laboratory conditions."
Dr. Auerbach, a pathologist and Senior Medical Investigator at the Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital in East Orange, New Jersey, conducted experiments on beagle dogs from 1967 to 1970. The first experiment utilized twenty beagles, who were reportedly subjected to "debarking" (surgical removal of tissue from the vocal chords) to keep them quiet in the laboratory. The dogs were also given tracheotomies (surgical openings in their windpipes) into which tubes were inserted. Lab aides periodically placed a lit cigarette, without a filter, at the other end of the tube. The beagles were made to puff between six and 12 cigarettes per day, an amount experimenters judged to be the equivalent to smoking 1-2 packs/day in humans. A laboratory aide would attend each dog while they were smoking. Some of the dogs became addicted to nicotine. One displayed withdrawal symptoms when cigarette smoking was discontinued. Some of the dogs reportedly became so addicted to the administration that they wagged their tails and jumped into the smoking box (according to a report in a medical journal by the experimenters).
The experiments were financially supported by the VA and the ACS. The "smoking beagle" experiments continued for four years and were widely protested as animal cruelty. The National Catholic Society for Animal Welfare placed advertisements in newspapers throughout the U.S. protesting the experiments. The ads showed one of the beagles exhaling cigarette smoke while hooked up to a smoking machine. The caption said, "They cannot protest. They cannot escape. They are defenseless against the demands of science." The ads encouraged readers to contact their congressmen to ask them to stop the experiments and thousands responded. Dr. Auerbach defended the experiments, claiming that it would take 20 years worth of human studies to determine if filtered cigarettes were safe, as opposed to 18 months worth of dog experiments. Although he had already (along with many others) established a clear tobacco/smoking link through pathology and clinical studies (see also Oscar Auerbach), apparently, the focus of this particular study was to determine whether filtered cigarettes were "safe". It is not clear how such a notable difference in physiology (18 months as opposed to 20 years) would be an advantage, let alone valid and applicable to humans. Nor is it clear how severely mutilated beagles, subjected to not one, but two surgical procedures (often severely debilitating in themselves) smoking cigarettes through tubes inserted into tracheotomies, demonstrated this purportedly successful outcome. Never-the-less, according to the ACS, the results refuted contentions from tobacco interests that there were no cigarette-cancer links and claims to the contrary were only "statistical."
Nineteen of the beagles died during the course of the first set of experiments involving 20 beagles. The remaining beagle was to be killed when the studies were concluded.
NCI & the tobacco industry
Covance Laboratories (under its former name of Hazleton Laboratories) was associated with the Council for Tobacco Research conducting animal studies for tobacco companies. In September of 1972, Carl Baker, the former chairman of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), became president of Hazleton Laboratories. Hazleton was a "major research contractor" for NCI and had been conducting chemosol treated cigarettes for "tar" tumorigenicity for nine U.S. cigarette manufacturers since 1970.
In an NCI sponsored study, Hazleton provided animal data favorable to the tobacco industry that contributed to the continued marketing of cigarettes. Between February of 1978 and March of 1980, Hazleton conducted a two-year study of for NCI on the the cardiovascular effects of mainstream cigarette smoke and carbon monoxide on "204 permanently tracheostomized male beagle" dogs. The dogs were forced to inhale all of the mainstream smoke generated by six cigarettes a day while being fed diets of varying levels of cholesterol. A number of dogs died during the study. The study concluded that smoking may have "a possible protective effect" and "lent no support to the suggestion that cigarette smoking increases the rate of development of atherosclerosis."
Smokescreen
Animal testing has many advantages for the researcher, the tobacco and other industries. He or she has has virtually complete control over powerless, expendable and often silent (debarked), subjects. Published results are conveniently and profitably churned out in a few months or years. Results of animal experiments are open to interpretation and are therefore, easily manipulated. Researchers are free to use and kill subjects (over 90% of which do not even have to be reported) until desired results are achieved or even to refute human studies and perpetuate confusion.
Media accounts often depict vivisection issues as "animal rights vs. science". Endless pseudo debates and straw man arguments provide convenient smokescreens for flagrant welfare violations and hostility to reforms. In other industries as well, they provide a smokescreen for incompetence, inefficacy and damage to human health. For example, the practice of product testing by pharmaceutical and chemical companies has been regularly criticized by the medical and scientific community as unscientific and dangerous to humans. However, reporters receive "news handouts" from laboratories and report them without question. See also animal testing, sections 1 through 3.
Animal researchers sometimes publish in hundreds of journals, much to their professional and financial success. There is also a huge and profitable industry built which includes animal breeders, suppliers of cages and equipment designed specifically for animal testing. A 2001 audit for 30 facilities revealed that approximately 56% received over 100 million per year from the NIH for animal research. See also NIH.
Quotable
On December 6, 1993, the New York Times quoted sworn testimony of William Campbell, then President and CEO of Phillip Morris:
Source
Overview & history
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.
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 (see picture at the bottom of the page). 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. According to a 1957 medical journal:
- "the failure of many investigators to induce experimental cancers, except in a handful of cases, during fifty years of trying, casts serious doubt on the validity of the cigarette-lung cancer theory."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.
Smoking beagle experiments
Dr. Oscar Auerbach
At one point, Dr. Oscar Auerbach "trained" 86 beagles to smoke in experiments where 12 developed cancer. It was said to be the first instance of tumors produced in large animals exposed to tobacco smoke. However, it is not clear why this particular study was given validity over previous studies in large (and small) animals, which failed to produce cancer. The American Cancer Society, which financed much of the research, announced that the results "effectively refute contentions by cigarette-manufacturing interests that there was no cigarette-cancer link." The response of the Tobacco Institute, an industry trade group, was that it was "impossible" to draw conclusions from work on dogs subject to such "stressful" laboratory conditions."
Dr. Auerbach, a pathologist and Senior Medical Investigator at the Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital in East Orange, New Jersey, conducted experiments on beagle dogs from 1967 to 1970. The first experiment utilized twenty beagles, who were reportedly subjected to "debarking" (surgical removal of tissue from the vocal chords) to keep them quiet in the laboratory. The dogs were also given tracheotomies (surgical openings in their windpipes) into which tubes were inserted. Lab aides periodically placed a lit cigarette, without a filter, at the other end of the tube. The beagles were made to puff between six and 12 cigarettes per day, an amount experimenters judged to be the equivalent to smoking 1-2 packs/day in humans. A laboratory aide would attend each dog while they were smoking. Some of the dogs became addicted to nicotine. One displayed withdrawal symptoms when cigarette smoking was discontinued. Some of the dogs reportedly became so addicted to the administration that they wagged their tails and jumped into the smoking box (according to a report in a medical journal by the experimenters).
The experiments were financially supported by the VA and the ACS. The "smoking beagle" experiments continued for four years and were widely protested as animal cruelty. The National Catholic Society for Animal Welfare placed advertisements in newspapers throughout the U.S. protesting the experiments. The ads showed one of the beagles exhaling cigarette smoke while hooked up to a smoking machine. The caption said, "They cannot protest. They cannot escape. They are defenseless against the demands of science." The ads encouraged readers to contact their congressmen to ask them to stop the experiments and thousands responded. Dr. Auerbach defended the experiments, claiming that it would take 20 years worth of human studies to determine if filtered cigarettes were safe, as opposed to 18 months worth of dog experiments. Although he had already (along with many others) established a clear tobacco/smoking link through pathology and clinical studies (see also Oscar Auerbach), apparently, the focus of this particular study was to determine whether filtered cigarettes were "safe". It is not clear how such a notable difference in physiology (18 months as opposed to 20 years) would be an advantage, let alone valid and applicable to humans. Nor is it clear how severely mutilated beagles, subjected to not one, but two surgical procedures (often severely debilitating in themselves) smoking cigarettes through tubes inserted into tracheotomies, demonstrated this purportedly successful outcome. Never-the-less, according to the ACS, the results refuted contentions from tobacco interests that there were no cigarette-cancer links and claims to the contrary were only "statistical."
Nineteen of the beagles died during the course of the first set of experiments involving 20 beagles. The remaining beagle was to be killed when the studies were concluded.
NCI & the tobacco industry
Covance Laboratories (under its former name of Hazleton Laboratories) was associated with the Council for Tobacco Research conducting animal studies for tobacco companies. In September of 1972, Carl Baker, the former chairman of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), became president of Hazleton Laboratories. Hazleton was a "major research contractor" for NCI and had been conducting chemosol treated cigarettes for "tar" tumorigenicity for nine U.S. cigarette manufacturers since 1970.
In an NCI sponsored study, Hazleton provided animal data favorable to the tobacco industry that contributed to the continued marketing of cigarettes. Between February of 1978 and March of 1980, Hazleton conducted a two-year study of for NCI on the the cardiovascular effects of mainstream cigarette smoke and carbon monoxide on "204 permanently tracheostomized male beagle" dogs. The dogs were forced to inhale all of the mainstream smoke generated by six cigarettes a day while being fed diets of varying levels of cholesterol. A number of dogs died during the study. The study concluded that smoking may have "a possible protective effect" and "lent no support to the suggestion that cigarette smoking increases the rate of development of atherosclerosis."
Smokescreen
Animal testing has many advantages for the researcher, the tobacco and other industries. He or she has has virtually complete control over powerless, expendable and often silent (debarked), subjects. Published results are conveniently and profitably churned out in a few months or years. Results of animal experiments are open to interpretation and are therefore, easily manipulated. Researchers are free to use and kill subjects (over 90% of which do not even have to be reported) until desired results are achieved or even to refute human studies and perpetuate confusion.
Media accounts often depict vivisection issues as "animal rights vs. science". Endless pseudo debates and straw man arguments provide convenient smokescreens for flagrant welfare violations and hostility to reforms. In other industries as well, they provide a smokescreen for incompetence, inefficacy and damage to human health. For example, the practice of product testing by pharmaceutical and chemical companies has been regularly criticized by the medical and scientific community as unscientific and dangerous to humans. However, reporters receive "news handouts" from laboratories and report them without question. See also animal testing, sections 1 through 3.
Animal researchers sometimes publish in hundreds of journals, much to their professional and financial success. There is also a huge and profitable industry built which includes animal breeders, suppliers of cages and equipment designed specifically for animal testing. A 2001 audit for 30 facilities revealed that approximately 56% received over 100 million per year from the NIH for animal research. See also NIH.
Quotable
- "The link between smoking and lung cancer in humans was denied for many years based on vivisection data. Health warnings were delayed for all those years." Moneim A. Fadali, M.D.
- "Animal experiments failed notoriously to demonstrate a smoking-cancer connection for over half a century...If the greatest killer of our time was promoted by physicians based on animal experiments, there is obviously something terminally wrong with the system." C. Ray Greek, MD
- "...all the useful evidence we have accumulated about cancer has come from human studies. The links between chemicals, x-rays, foods, and asbestos on the one hand and different types of cancer on the other hand were all obtained after doctors had studied human patients. Instead of helping, animal experiments have consistently slowed down the speed with which these essential discoveries have been accepted.
- For example, the link between tobacco smoke and cancer was spotted decades ago by doctors working with human patients, but animal experiments were used as an excuse by politicians who wanted to avoid taking action against (and therefore annoying) the wealthy tobacco companies. Researchers spent decades making beagles smoke cigarettes and painting tobacco tar of the backs of mice in attempts to establish a laboratory link between tobacco and cancer - a link which was not needed since links clearly existed between tobacco and human cancer. The decades of vague and inconclusive results gave the tobacco companies a chance to keep the confusion going and to prevent doctors giving their patients authoritative warnings about smoking tobacco. Doctors knew that cigarettes caused cancer but were encouraged to keep quiet while animal researchers spent years failing (quite predictably) to obtain any conclusive results." Dr. Vernon Coleman.
On December 6, 1993, the New York Times quoted sworn testimony of William Campbell, then President and CEO of Phillip Morris:
- "A. To my knowledge, it has not been proven that cigarette smoking causes cancer.
Q. What do you base that on?
A. I base that on the fact that traditionally, there is, you know, in scientific terms, there are hurdles related to causation, and at this time there is no evidence that -- they have not been able to reproduce cancer in animals from cigarette smoking."
Source
Irrelevant animal tests
on new and existing products
by PETA
Health officials have known for decades that smoking cigarettes causes disease in nearly every organ of the human body and that animal tests are poor predictors of these effects. Yet tobacco companies and the contract laboratories that they hire continue to conduct cruel, irrelevant animal tests on new and existing products.
Torturous Tests
In tests that many people don't realize are still being conducted, animals are forced to breathe cigarette smoke for up to six hours straight, every day, for as long as three years. Animals naturally avoid breathing cigarette smoke, so lab rats are forced into tiny canisters, and cigarette smoke is pumped directly into their noses. In the past, dogs and monkeys have had tubes attached to holes in their necks or have had masks strapped to their faces to force smoke into their lungs. In other commonly conducted tests, mice and rats have cigarette tar applied directly to their bare skin to induce the growth of skin tumors.
Specific examples of cigarette experiments include the following:
• In a study to test the effects of adding ingredients such as honey, sugar, molasses, plum juice, lime oil, chocolate, cocoa, and coffee extract to cigarettes, experimenters with Philip Morris stuffed thousands of rats into tiny canisters that pumped tobacco smoke directly into their noses six hours a day for 90 consecutive days. The rats were then killed and dissected to examine the harm caused to their bodies.(1)
• To test the effects of using high-fructose corn syrup to flavor cigarettes, experimenters at R.J. Reynolds spread cigarette tar on the skin of more than 1,000 mice and rats and then forced them to breathe cigarette smoke. Many of the mice who had tar spread on their skin died during the study. Other mice had their skin peel off, and they developed skin tumors. All the surviving animals were killed and dissected.(2)
• Philip Morris experimenters subjected 1,000 rats to two years of breathing either diesel engine exhaust or secondhand cigarette smoke for six hours a day, seven days a week, just to compare the effects of the exposure on their lungs.(3)
• Experimenters hired by Lorillard Tobacco (the maker of Newport and other brands of cigarettes) forced rats to breathe cigarette smoke for three hours a day for five days and then killed them and cut them open to see if the exposure had harmed their lungs.(4)
Companies also conduct animal experiments to test new cigarette papers, tobacco mixtures, and so-called "safer" cigarettes. PETA researchers discovered that until recently, the National Cancer Institute—which is supposed to combat tobacco use—was selling mice to tobacco companies for use in tests to develop new products.(5) And under the guise of developing treatments to "help" smokers, experimenters torture animals with taxpayers' money. At the Oregon National Primate Research Center, for instance, dozens of pregnant rhesus monkeys had tubes surgically implanted in order to subject them to a continuous flow of nicotine for the last four months of their pregnancies. A few days before full term, experimenters cut the fetuses out of the mothers and killed and dissected the preterm babies in order to determine the effects of nicotine exposure on their bodies.(6)
Archaic Methods
Tobacco products and their ingredients are not required by U.S. law to be tested on animals—and for good reason. Manufacturers can effectively use in vitro (non-animal) technology, human-based research methods, and the existing body of knowledge from human epidemiological and clinical studies about the health concerns associated with smoking. Indeed, all the tobacco product tests required in Canada are modern non-animal in vitro tests.(7) Tobacco industry scientists have concluded that "in vitro toxicology tests can be successfully used both for better understanding the biological activity of cigarette smoke … and for guiding the development of cigarettes with reduced toxicity."(8) Philip Morris' German laboratories have even developed in vitro methods that use human lung tissue to test their products, but the company's U.S. counterpart still continues to use cruel and less reliable animal tests.
None of the aforementioned cruel animal experiments would even be legal if conducted in Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Slovakia, or the U.K., where tobacco product and ingredient tests on animals have been banned.(9-13)
Crucial Differences
Animal tests are not only cruel but also irrelevant to human health. Different animals have different reactions to toxins, and animals in laboratories aren't exposed to cigarette smoke in the same manner or time frame as human smokers are.
The link between tobacco and lung cancer in humans was obscured for years because data collected from experiments on animals did not show this relationship. A recent article by a tobacco industry consultant reported that results from years of cigarette inhalation studies on rats, mice, hamsters, dogs, and nonhuman primates did not show significant increases in cancerous tumor development and were "clearly at variance with the epidemiological evidence in smokers, and it is difficult to reconcile this major difference between observational studies in humans and controlled laboratory studies now in five different animal species."(14)
What You Can Do
To quote the National Cancer Institute, "There is no safe tobacco product."(15) We already know fromclinical research—and from basic common sense—that smoking is bad for us. If you still use tobacco products, seek out companies such as Imperial Tobacco, Nat Sherman, and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco that have official policies against testing their products on animals.
If the tobacco industry wants to continue developing and marketing products that cause addiction and kill people, it should do so without the help of the government and without harming animals. You can write to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and request that it follow the lead of agencies in progressive countries by banning tobacco product and ingredient tests on animals:
Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee
Center for Tobacco Products
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
10903 New Hampshire Ave.
Silver Spring, MD 20993
[email protected]
“Pregnant Rhesus monkeys in these laboratories are forced to breathe in cigarette smoke during the duration of their pregnancy and, shortly before giving birth, the mother and her unborn child will be killed so her body may be dissected and her baby removed to observe the side effects of smoking on pregnancy and fetal development.” (source)
Many sources report, “Inside laboratories built by the tobacco industry, or in contract laboratories, beagle puppies are attached to gas mask-like devices and forced to breathe in cigarette smoke for hours on end.” Many accounts say this is for “upwards of ten hours a day” for tens of thousands of dogs in research labs all over the world. “After enduring months, if not years, of this torture, the poor, helpless dogs are killed so their lungs and other organs can be examined to study the impact the smoke had on them.” (source)