Dogs have been our best friends for thousands of years. They only have a lifespan of a little over ten years, and they spend almost all of their time following their owners.
And how did we treat them? In the 1970s, a journalist exposed the ugliness of the Western world: a group of scientists, catering to the demands of tobacco companies, secretly used dogs in experiments to prove that smoking was harmless, making the dogs smoke 100 cigarettes a day for three consecutive years. So what was the final outcome?
A female journalist secretly investigated the incident of scientists experimenting on dogs.
In the mid-1970s, a report about "dogs, tobacco, and experiments" made headlines in major British media outlets. Since then, many countries have banned scientists from using animals to experiment on tobacco.
Behind this lies a cruel historical mystery. If Mary hadn't intervened so righteously back then, who knows how many more adorable dogs would have perished in tobacco experiments.
Her entire broadcast recounted the miserable lives of the dogs in the laboratory, even though she knew that doing so might offend those monopolistic companies. But she wasn't afraid, because as a journalist, she had to do it; she couldn't let the public remain fools forever.
She witnessed scientists, sponsored by tobacco companies, cutting open the tracheas of dogs and inserting tubes into their airways, with lit cigarettes strapped to the other end. In this way, the dogs were forced to passively inhale at least one hundred cigarettes every day for three years without interruption.
Three years later, the surviving dogs didn't find peace either; scientists dissected, studied, and destroyed them. Mary witnessed this and felt immense disappointment towards the tobacco merchants and scientists who were their own kind. Dogs are man's best friend—why would they do this?
This brings us back to the nature of cigarettes themselves.
Tobacco has only been used to make cigarettes for a little over two hundred years. From passive cultivation in various colonies to active smoking worldwide, people's understanding of the harms of cigarettes can be said to be completely blank.
After a meal, countless people like to light a cigarette because it can bring them a blissful experience. They also like to light a cigarette when they are tired from work, as it can soothe their nerves.
Initially, people did believe that cigarettes were the safest drug, but as health problems became increasingly prominent, some scientists began to question whether cigarettes themselves posed significant risks.
So in the 1950s, after years of investigation and sampling, a cancer research organization announced to smokers worldwide that "smoking may cause cancer." This caused a global uproar. Cancer was considered an incurable disease at the time, and smoking was the culprit, so naturally many people began to boycott smoking.
Clearly, this situation severely damaged the interests of tobacco companies. Seeing their profits decline every quarter, they came up with a solution: Why not just prove that smoking is harmless?
Science versus science was born, and the unfortunate ones were our lovely dogs.
The incident was made public, and the experimental dogs suffered a tragic fate.
The tobacco companies' goal was clear: to force laboratory researchers to reach the sole conclusion that smoking had no connection to cancer, for which they spared no expense.
The best subjects for the cigarette experiments would have been humans, but Western laws at the time were quite comprehensive, prohibiting human cruelty. Out of necessity, countless dogs were subjected to the abuse of smoking a hundred cigarettes a day. This experiment was doomed from the start, because experiments on animals are not suitable for humans, just as many drugs effective for humans are completely ineffective on animals.
The experiments were conducted clandestinely underground, while tobacco companies publicly declared that science showed smoking was harmless. However, the public had no idea what they actually used to conduct the experiments until Mary's arrival.
At that time, she was just a novice in the news industry, but sometimes it is these kinds of people who are righteous and dare to question things that are deceitful and fraudulent. Once, her superiors revealed that they wanted to investigate tobacco experiments, and she, with her righteous spirit, took on this arduous but glorious task.
After disguising herself, Mary transformed into a recent female college graduate and went to a tobacco experimental base to apply for a job. Due to her outstanding resume, she was quickly hired.
There, she saw thousands of dogs locked in cages. Her task was to tie up these innocent dogs and send them to the testing table. During the experiment, she wanted to help the dogs countless times, but she had not yet collected the core evidence, so she could not act rashly.
As time went on, she successfully became familiar with the researchers, and they stopped being wary of her. So she started asking them about the results of the experiment. Many of the researchers treated her as one of their own and said without hesitation that the dogs would die one after another over the next three years. Even if some of them survived, they would not let them go and would eventually destroy the evidence.
Mary was heartbroken, but she knew the best way to save the dogs was to bring down these heartless people as soon as possible. So she used her spare time to take pictures of the dogs and secretly copied some laboratory data. Looking at the data on the computer, she felt horrified.
A scientist revealed to her that smoking is absolutely harmful. After autopsies, it was found that the organs and tissues of dogs that had smoked for three years had been completely eroded. Moreover, over time, the dogs' lungs would become completely diseased, and pulmonary fibrosis would directly cause the dogs to die of suffocation.
The dog that persisted for three years is basically ruined, because 100 cigarettes a day adds up to more than 10,900 cigarettes over three years. This data is terrifying and heartbreaking. Is this how man's best friend is betrayed?
Thankfully, Mary stepped forward and released all the data she had obtained. This event had a huge impact, and countries around the world have explicitly banned the use of dogs for such inhumane experiments. May the dogs in heaven not resent humanity.
