Pregnant mice will be regularly forced into gas tubes for up to two years, to test whether vaping while pregnant increases the risk of children having asthma.
BERNY TORRE: Horrific experiments on pregnant mice which are forced to breathe in e-cig flavors have been widely condemned by animal rights campaigners. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently awarded biomedical research organization The Lundquist Institute £1.76m ($2.3m) to research whether vaping while pregnant increases the risk of children having asthma… The research will also assess the effects of nicotine and e-cigarette flavorings on “germ cells” – precursors to sperm and egg cells – in growing embryos in the womb…
Research leader Dr Virender Rehan is to lead a team at The Lundquist Institute to use pregnant mice to investigate whether this also happens with e-cigarettes, which are particularly popular among young people… Dr Rehan hopes the findings could change US laws around vaping as the number of youngsters using e-cigarettes has “increased alarmingly” to millions across the world… Studies have shown women who smoke during pregnancy increase the risk of their children having asthma – and that those children can pass it on to their own children even if they are non-smokers…
But the method for testing the pregnant mice – which will be regularly forced into gas tubes for up to two years – has drawn harsh criticism, especially from animal rights group PETA. Dr Andreas Stucki worked for the tobacco company Philip Morris International Inc. before returning to research and now is a biomedical scientist for PETA US. He claimed the research money was being “wasted” on ineffective animal tests that will produce findings with limited relevance to humans.
Dr Stucki claims: “In general I believe animal testing is unnecessary and especially in regards to vaping. “There was a nicotine addiction study that had to be stopped two years ago because four monkeys died. “There are so many humans at the moment that either continue to smoke, they switch to vaping, they are dual users, they are completely both – they are the perfect subjects to perform a study on. “There are endless possibilities that you can use human subjects for and we do not have the natural disadvantage of using animals”. SOURCE…
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