Barbara Stagno, CAARE Citizens for Alternatives to Animal Research and
Experimentation
June 2018
CAARE recently learned that National Jewish Health (NJH), a research
hospital specializing in respiratory diseases, conducts cruel smoking
experiments on animals. Worse still, in a sign of reckless neglect, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) cited NJH with a critical violation of the
Animal Welfare Act, which indicates that an animal died or was seriously
injured. Effective cutting-edge, humane, non-animal technology exists.
Please
SIGN AND SHARE THIS LETTER to insist that NJH immediately use non-animal
methods instead of torturing animals in their labs.
The April 2018 USDA inspection at NJH’s lab in Denver, Colorado revealed
that researchers placed defenseless guinea pigs in smoking machines, exposed
them for much longer than what the study protocol had prescribed, and failed
to administer medication during the smoke exposure because of “difficulty”
obtaining the medicine in time.
As a result of this severe negligence, the animals suffered terribly due to
being placed in the smoking chamber for five hours a day instead of two, and
without receiving any medication to counteract the effects of the smoke.
When they were finally released from the hell of the smoking machine, two
guinea pigs had blood in their nostrils. One was so ill she was gasping for
air and crying. She had to be euthanized that day.
The use of animals is inexcusable when a range of non-animal methods exist
to study the effects of inhaled chemicals or smoke. These cutting-edge,
non-animal methods are far more relevant and humane than cruel, antiquated
animal tests.
Epithelix offers in vitro solutions by producing reconstitutions of human tissues, including MucilAir™, a unique 3D Human Airway Epithelia, to study respiratory diseases and test inhaled chemicals.
Researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have developed a Smoking Human
Airway-On-A-Chip device that can actually “breathe” in and out, delivering
smoke to microfluidic chips lined by lung cells isolated from human
patients.
Even cigarette-smoking machines and smoking robots exist. These systems have
been developed by the German company VITROCELL® to study the impacts of
gases, nanoparticles and complex mixtures on lung cells in vitro.
The terrible fear, pain and suffering these poor guinea pigs endured is
completely indefensible when currently superior methods exist that do not
use animals.
Thank you for everything you do for animals!
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