Cigarettes Kill Animals Too
Cigarettes Kill Animals Too
Most people are fully aware that smoking cigarettes is dangerous to one's health. With the ever-present Surgeon General Warnings printed on every single tobacco product on the market, you would be hard pressed to have missed it.
It doesn't necessarily take a doctor or scientist though to realize that breathing in carcinogens on a daily basis is a potentially lethal habit. Common sense tells us that breathing smoke of any kind is bad for our lungs, yet for tens of thousands of dogs in research laboratories around the world -- who are forced to ingest cigarette smoke for upwards of ten hours a day -- this apparently obvious fact is ignored.
In the tobacco industry's vain attempt to prove that their product doesn't actually kill people, they have invested literally millions of dollars into animal testing facilities of their own.
Despite the fact all scientific evidence points to the same conclusion -- using cigarettes and other tobacco products leads to cancers, emphysema, birth defects and a host of other physical ailments in humans -- tobacco companies and research laboratories continue on with what appears to be not only a complete disregard of scientific findings, but a lack of concern for the lives of other beings.
Inside laboratories built by the tobacco industry, or in contract laboratories, beagle puppies are attached to gas mask-like devices and forced to breath in cigarette smoke for hours on end. 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.
Since all conclusive evidence points to the fact that smoking is harmful for human beings, what could the possible motivation be for torturing and killing non-human animals, such as these dogs? And this horrific treatment is not limited to dogs. 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.
The same is true for a host of other species such as mice and rats.
It is hard for me to fathom the consciousness of a person who attaches a gas mask to a puppy's or pregnant monkey's face each day. What must go through their minds to enable them to justify such injustice? Unlike other forms of vivisection where a lab technician can delude themselves into believing that sacrificing another species benefits the greater good, those working inside tobacco research laboratories must be all too aware that their "research" will benefit no one other than the tobacco industry's pockets.
The decision to smoke is each individual's choice to make, but when you make that choice, please consider the animals trapped in laboratories who have no choice.
It is hard for me to fathom the consciousness of a person who attaches a gas mask to a puppy's or pregnant monkey's face each day. What must go through their minds to enable them to justify such injustice? Unlike other forms of vivisection where a lab technician can delude themselves into believing that sacrificing another species benefits the greater good, those working inside tobacco research laboratories must be all too aware that their "research" will benefit no one other than the tobacco industry's pockets.
The decision to smoke is each individual's choice to make, but when you make that choice, please consider the animals trapped in laboratories who have no choice.
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