This is a blog for the Mental Health Policy Class at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work.

Showing posts with label animal rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animal rights. Show all posts

February 11, 2008

Is Tobacco Money Tainted?

Here's a recipe for academic controversy: First, find dozens of hard-core teenage smokers as young as 14 and study their brains with high-tech scans. Second, feed vervet monkeys liquid nicotine and then kill at least six of them to examine their brains. Third, accept $6 million from tobacco giant Philip Morris to pay for it all. Fourth, cloak the project in unusual secrecy. At UCLA, a team of researchers is following this formula to produce what it hopes will be a groundbreaking study of addiction. So far, the scientists have proved that the issues of animal testing and tobacco-funded research are among the most contentious on university campuses.