HELP END NICOTINE EXPERIMENTS ON MONKEYS AT OHSU

SPINDEL'S NICOTINE EXPERIMENTS ARE FUNDED FOR FOUR MORE YEARS!

Spindel has received an astounding $7.6 million from the NIH since 1992 to conduct experiments like those on babies such as Thimble, and their mothers. He is scheduled to get funds from the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to continue killing baby monkeys until 2012!

RIDING THE FEDERAL GRANT GRAVY-TRAIN

Lazy is one word to describe Spindel for taking easy federal money for years to study the effects of nicotine on infant monkeys. Instead of developing a relevant system of studying the effects of nicotine on human smokers and their infants, he has made a comfortable living off a continual stream of federal grants using unwilling subjects whose complaints will never be heard without us.

IDA UNDERCOVER

From 1998-2000, IDA's Matt Rossell went undercover as a primate caretaker at OHSU where he photographed sweet Thimble and other monkeys used in deadly experiments, and wrote in his diary the horrible reality of what he witnessed daily:

Mother monkeys' instincts to care for their offspring are as strong as those of human mothers.

Some monkey mothers were allowed to keep their babies for several weeks or months before having them torn away for experiments. The agony endured by these animals is unimaginable. Again, in Matt Rossell's words:

SPINDEL: CRUEL

Cruel is the only way to describe the actual experiments Spindel conducts on female monkeys who are impregnated and subjected to multiple surgeries to implant nicotine pumps in their backs. The monkeys endure multiple surgeries as the pumps must be changed up to five times during their pregnancies. Steady doses of nicotine are delivered to the pregnant monkeys and their babies are cut out of their wombs at various stages of development in order to dissect their lungs.

HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?

At OHSU, as at other experimental laboratories, an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) reviews all proposed experiments before they go forward. Matt Rossell, who sat on the OHSU IACUC when Spindel's nicotine experiments were up for review said: "There was literally no discussion; the grant was approved without question. The IACUC is made of employees of the lab all with a vested interest to approve these proposals. It's just a rubber stamp committee that gives the illusion of oversight."

Careless IACUC approval is the first domino that falls, creating a cascade of waste and death. IACUCs are supposed to determine if the same information could be obtained without using animals. In the case of nicotine's effect on infants born to smoking mothers, it is clear that such information could be mined from human clinical studies—and would have direct relevance to humans. Animal data is so unreliable, that for decades, the tobacco industry used it to "prove" that nicotine is not harmful. It was only through human studies that the link between tobacco consumption and cancer, heart disease, and other pulmonary illnesses was proved.

WHAT DOES THE EXPERIMENTER SAY?

Here's how Eliot Spindel justifies his horrible and deadly experiments:

WHAT WE MUST DO TO END SPINDEL'S NICOTINE EXPERIMENTS ON MONKEYS:

Spindel himself admits that information from human clinical studies is available. Our job is to convince the open-handed government that we want all money currently spent on nicotine experiments on animals to go to education, prevention, and smoking cessation efforts. If animal experiments are allowed to continue, the tobacco industry will no doubt look to unscrupulous researchers like Spindel to come up with a way to make it possible for pregnant women to smoke without harming their babies. IDA's president, Elliot Katz, has written to OHSU about ending Spindel's experiments.