Have you heard the news?? Something that research has just discovered….smoking while pregnant can effect fetal development.? GASP!!? Say it isn’t so!? Now I know unless you’ve been living under a rock that this is not breaking news to you.? We’ve known for years how harmful smoking is during pregnancy.? So why is the National Institute of Health (NIH) funding nicotine experiments to study the effects of nicotine on infant monkeys and other animals?

The NIH have spent at least $16.5 million on nicotine experiments in pregnant and newborn animals just since 2002.? This is not the total cost of nicotine research on animals, just the part designated to pregnant and newborn animals.? The total amount would be much higher.?

At Oregon Health and Science University, Elliot Spindel conducts experiments on pregnant monkeys who have nicotine pumps surgically implanted in their bodies. Steady doses of nicotine are delivered to these mothers, and their babies are cut out of their wombs at various stages of development in order to dissect their lungs.? Spindel has received a whopping $7.6 million since 1992 and is scheduled for more funds to do his “research”?through 2012 from the NIH.

Not only are these experiments a waste of our tax dollars, but they are terribly cruel.? To add insult to injury, animal data is so unreliable that the tobacco industry have used it for decades to prove tobacco is not harmful.? It was through human studies that the link between tobacco use and cancer, heart disease and other illnesses was found.?

I had no idea of these experiments being done and the millions of taxpayers dollars being spent?on them until today.? (Thanks to my myspace friend Mary for posting the bulletin.)? I think it’s safe to say that there are several people who don’t know about this, but we all know the dangers of smoking.? Yet millions of people smoke anyway.? The government even estimates that about 12 percent of women still smoke while they are pregnant.? I have a hard time believing that in this day and age a pregnant woman doesn’t know the risk she is putting her baby in.? So why would she do it??? Maybe these researchers should be spending their time and money trying to learn why pregnant woman don’t quit.?

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If you want the NIH to stop the testing of nicotine on animals, click below.? All you have to do is fill out your email address, first and last name.? It will take about 10 seconds and?will help stop?hundreds of animals from being harmed and killed in experiments to test the effects of nicotine and tobacco.? Help stop cruelty in the name of science.

http://ga0.org/campaign/NIH_Nicotine

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We were approached by Taylor Global, Inc, a national PR firm, on behalf of Kimberly-Clark and asked to help them promote breast cancer awareness. We do support breast cancer awareness (as evidenced by our donations via our apparel sales) so we gladly agreed. We have included the news release below:

Kimberly-Clark?s Viva Paper Towels and Huggies Baby Wipes Come Together to Support Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Donation and special packaging will support breast cancer research and awareness programs.

NEENAH, Wis. (Sept. 18, 2008) ? Kimberly-Clark Corporation?s Viva Paper Towels and Huggies Baby Wipes have joined forces to help fight breast cancer during October ? Breast Cancer Awareness Month ? by donating as much as $450,000 to breast cancer research and education.?

?Having Viva Paper Towels and Huggies Baby Wipes simultaneously supporting unique breast cancer programs is a first for Kimberly-Clark,? said Laura Keely, director of Kimberly-Clark\’s consumer promotion marketing. ?The massive impact of breast cancer, which affects more than 200,000 women and their families each year, inspired the brands to raise both funds and awareness.?

As part of the Viva Paper Towels program, the brand will donate $.10 for each package of paper towels purchased at select retailers across the country during the month of October. Additionally, the Viva brand will donate $5.00 for each new consumer who becomes a member of its online Viva Diva Caf? at www.vivadivacafe.com. Collectively, the Viva brand will donate a minimum of $125,000 up to a maximum of $200,000 to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF).

Huggies Baby Wipes is conducting a two-part program. The brand will donate $.20 for each Huggies Baby Wipes Gentle Care Sensitive tub featuring the Komen graphics purchased between Sept. 15 and Dec. 31, 2008 at select retailers. Additionally, Huggies Baby Wipes will donate $1.00 for each specially marked Gentle Care Sensitive refill box purchased at Sam?s Club through the end of the year. Through the two programs, the Huggies brand will donate between $150,000 and $250,000 to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

The brands? donation will support two of the nation?s premier breast cancer organizations: The Breast Cancer Research Foundation and Susan G. Komen for the Cure. These organizations provide critical funding for medical research and offer education and awareness programs.?

In addition, beginning today and continuing throughout October, Kroger will display specially marked packaging of Viva Paper Towels and Huggies Diapers featuring the inspiring stories of two Kimberly-Clark employees and cancer survivors. Anita Banjak and Brenda Nelson will be featured on select Viva
Paper Towels and Huggies Diapers product packaging respectively.?

Keely added, ?We hope these stories will inspire women to take an active role in the fight against breast cancer in their local communities and serve?as a reminder to get screened.?

You can find the original news release and more details on Kimberly-Clark’s site.

We would also like to invite you to help us raise donations for Breast Cancer Research by purchasing official MTAH branded apparel.

This is an email that I received from one of my More Than A Housewife readers.? She was wanting to leave this is a comment on the blog I wrote about suffrage, but it was too long.? I felt it was important to share this with you so here it is. Thank you Shelly for sending it to me.

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This is a message for all women Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, Green Party who ever you support. Please VOTE!? Men you need to support your Wives, daughters, girlfriends, sisters, nieces, aunts and Grandmothers to exercise their right to vote. Be a gentleman and give them a ride to the nearest voting booth.
THIS IS MOVING.? HOW QUICKLY WE FORGET…..IF WE EVER KNEW……? WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE.? This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.?
Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.
? The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.?
And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of obstructing sidewalk traffic.?
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.?
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.
Thus unfolded the “Night of Terror” on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote.?
For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food–all of it colorless slop–was infested with worms.?
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.?
?So, refresh my memory. Some women won’t vote this year because- -why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work?? Our vote doesn’t matter?? Its raining?
Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO’s new movie “Iron?Jawed Angels”.? It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder. All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.
My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women’s history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was–with herself.? One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie, she said.? What would those women think of the way I use, or don’t use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.? The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her all over again.
HBO released the movie on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn’t our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.
It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn’t make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.
Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.???We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. UNITED WE STAND DIVIDED WE FALL!