National Cancer Institute

From SourceWatch

This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch, sponsored by the American Legacy Foundation. Help expose the truth about the tobacco industry.

The National Cancer Institute is one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) organized within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

1 Organization
2 NCI & the War on Cancer
3 NCI & clinical trials for hydrazine sulfate
4 NCI & animal testing
- 4.1 Tobacco studies
- 4.2 Smoking beagles
5 Contact Info
6 Articles & sources

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Organization

The director of NCI is a presidential appointee, as per the National Cancer Act of 1971. The National Cancer Advisory Board and the President's Cancer Panel are also presidential appointments. All other directors and advisory boards comprising the NIH have research backgrounds and are appointed by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ^[1] The NCI has eight advisory boards. ^[2]

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NCI & the War on Cancer

In 1971, many sponsors of the War on Cancer predicted a cure by 1976. Instead, this multibillion dollar research program has proven to be a failure. The age adjusted total cancer mortality rate climbed steadily for decades until the early 1990s, when the rate started to fall slowly, due largely to reduced smoking. To encourage continued support for cancer research, now exceeding two billion dollars annually in the U.S. alone; researchers and administrators have misled the public. In 1987, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) found that the statistics from the National Cancer Institute "artificially inflate the amount of 'true' progress", concluding that even simple five-year survival statistics were manipulated. The NCI termed five-year survival a "cure" even if the patient died of the cancer after the five-year period. Also, by ignoring well known statistical biases, the NCI falsely suggested advances had been made in certain cancer therapies.^[3]

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NCI & clinical trials for hydrazine sulfate

According to "The $200 Billion Scam", published in Penthouse in 1997:

"In the 25 years since the federal government declared War on Cancer, an estimated $200 billion has been spent by U.S. taxpayers and private investors on research that has produced so little bang for the buck that it makes the Pentagon's $600 toilet seats look like bargains for every American home. The cancer industry has become a huge jobs program for brilliant, even highly motivated, doctors and other scientists, whose efforts are misguided by the economic forces behind the industry. Directly put, it's in the interests of all the fat cats in government and private enterprise who earn their living and status from what is largely a failed enterprise, to stick with it. That is why a drug like hydrazine sulfate is dumped on by the cancer establishment, instead of given legitimate support and honest evaluation."

The General Accounting Office (GAO) defied logic, reason, and science to give its blessing to the NCI's deliberately biased testing of hydrazine sulfate which produced false results to make it appear ineffective. NCI higher administrators who wrote the report also and ignored evidence pointing to rigged clinical trials. ^[4]

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NCI & animal testing

Agencies funding animal testing include the National Institutes of Health. More is spent on cancer than any other medical problem. There are more people living off of cancer than cancer sufferers. Millions of laboratory animals, including rats, mice, monkeys, guinea pigs, cats and dogs have been injected with cancerous material or implanted with malignancies.^[5], ^[6]

Why hasn't progress progress commensurated with the effort and money invested? One explanation is the unwarranted preoccupation with animal testing. Crucial genetic, molecular, immunologic and cellular differences have disqualify animal models as an effective means to a cure. Mice are most commonly used, although "Mice are actually poor models of the majority of human cancers"; according to the industries own laboratory animal publication. According to leading cancer researcher, Robert Weinberg, "The preclinical (animal) models of human cancer, in large part, stink… Hundreds of millions of dollars are being wasted every year by drug companies using these models." ^[7] See also War on Cancer.

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Tobacco studies

Under its former name of Hazleton Laboratories, Covance Laboratories was associated with the Council for Tobacco Research and conducted animal testing for tobacco companies. In September of 1972, Carl Baker, the former chairman of the NCI, became the president of Hazleton Laboratories. Hazleton was a "major research contractor" for NCI and had been conducting chemosol treated cigarettes for "tar" tumorigenicity for nine U.S. cigarette manufacturers since 1970. ^[8]

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Smoking beagles

In an NCI sponsored study, Hazleton provided animal data favorable to the tobacco industry that contributed to the continued marketing of cigarettes. Between February of 1978 and March of 1980, Hazleton conducted a two-year study of for NCI on the the cardiovascular effects of mainstream cigarette smoke and carbon monoxide on "204 permanently tracheostomized male beagle" dogs. The dogs were forced to inhale all of the mainstream smoke generated by six cigarettes a day while being fed diets of varying levels of cholesterol. A number of dogs died during the study. The study concluded that smoking may have "a possible protective effect" and "lent no support to the suggestion that cigarette smoking increases the rate of development of atherosclerosis." ^[9]

See also animal testing, section 5 on tobacco studies & National Institutes of Health, section 4 on animal research grants.

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