For Immediate Release
August 2, 2007
Warning Issued to Oregon Health Sciences Vivisector
Stop Killing Infant Primates and Wasting Millions on Uselss Smoking Research
Lake Oswego, OR- In an anonymous communique received by the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, activists claim to have visited the home of Oregon Health Sciences primate vivisector Eliot Spindel, issuing a warning to stop killing infant monkeys after addicting their mothers to Nicotine, purportedly to demonstrate the ill effects of cigarette smoking in pregnancy. “ALF Eyes on You” was apparently spray-painted on Spindel’s garage, and one vehicle was covered with a caustic chemical.
The communique reads in part:
Eliot was awarded this privilege [a visit from the vegan vigilantes called the ALF] because his crimes against nature are particularly vile. Eliot’s research involves addicting pregnant monkeys to Nicotine and killing their newborn babies at regular intervals to test what has been known for decades that smoking causes birth defects. It’s time for Eliots blatant abuse of primates to end.
Our message to Eliot is simple: Quit the torture industry and issue an apology or we swear we will make an example out of you. Tonight you got your home and car fucked up with chemicals and spray paint, but what’s going to be next, Eliot, spray paint, broken windows or fire bombs?
Look out behind you, Eliot. We have thousands of supporters and more every day. Whatever they pay you in one year, we promise we can match in damage in one night.
Spindel has obtained grants worth at least $9 million since 2000 to study smoking during pregnancy, long known as the largest preventable cause of low birth weight, premature delivery, neonatal morbidity, and infant mortality. Animal studies have been repeatedly discredited since the 1950’s, when they were used by the tobacco industry to convince doctors and the public that cigarette smoking was harmless. Spindel has been quoted as saying “Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a way for pregnant women to continue smoking without harming the baby too much?”
Press Officer Jerry Vlasak, MD points out that: “Spindel and his colleagues are wasting tens of millions of scarce health-care dollars, money that would be much better spent educating women on the hazards of smoking during pregnancy, and funding programs to get them to quit. My guess is the tobacco industry is behind at least some of Spindel’s research, much the way they funded the illicit research of the 1950s and 1960s that “demonstrated” smoking was actually good for people.”