193 



Z have also recently reviewed the following five documents: 



1. Final Report on Project Hippo I (January 1962) 



2. Report #1 Regarding Project Hippo II (June 1962) 



3. Final Report on Project Hippo II (May 1963) 



4. The Fate of Nicotine in the body (May 1963) 



5. A Tentative Hypothesis on Nicotine Addiction (May 

 1963) 



I received my Ph.D. in 1951, and I was professionally active during 

 and before the tiwe these documents were produced. 



The Hippo I Project was a limited pilot study of some of the 

 physiological effects of nicotine on rats. As of that time these 

 effects had already been addressed in the scientific literature. 

 In regard to nicotine's proposed effect on the hypothalamus the 

 researchers concluded "Nicotine does not stiisulate the hypothalanic 

 centers." They also concluded that the activity of nicotine on 

 ACTH release needs to be more thoroughly investigated. 



As part of their scientific protocol, the investigators used 

 "tolerant" rats, "Tolerance" in these rats was defined by these 

 investigators as having developed after a prolonged daily treatment 

 of nicotine such that the rats could bear without fatal reaction 

 dosage that would be lethal to fresh rats. This concept of 

 tolerance is markedly different from that of tolerance to the 

 sought after effects of an addictive substance. The development of 

 such tolerance to nicotine in experimental animals in the 

 laboratory setting has little relevance to the human situation in 

 which increased levels of consumption of substances such as heroin 

 and cocaine are observed in addicts. 



Nothing in this report states or suggests that smoking is 

 addictive. 



The purposes of Hippo II (two reports) were to understand scms of 

 the activities of nicotine that might explain why cigarette smokera 

 are so fond of their habit and to compare some effects of nicotine 

 with effects of the tranquilizer reserpine. The researchers found 

 that nicotine and reseirpina act quite differently. They further 

 proposed that nicotine has an enhancing effect on the pituitary 

 adrenal response to stress. 



The study is simplistic and narrow in its approach and adds little 

 of importance to what was known at that tine about the action of 

 nicotine. It certainly adds little to answer the question of why 

 smokers are fond of their habit. Moreover, the authors clearly 

 identified cigarette smoking as a habit in the Summary and 

 Discussion section. Nothing in this report supports the concept of 

 smoking as an addiction. 



The report titled "The Fata of Nicotine in the Body" is an 

 investigation of the absorption, distribution, break-down and 

 elimination of nicotine in humans and animals. Although the 

 authors initially describe tobacco use as an "habituation 

 (tolerance) and/or addiction" citing a 1960 publication by 

 Professor P.S. Larson, they, however, do not mention that 

 Professor Larson and co-authors published a definition of addiction 

 in a major treatise dated 1961 (also cited in the references 

 section) which reads "... an addicting drug is held to result in 

 physical as well as psychic dependence, and withdrawal leads to 

 serious and predictable physical as well as mental and psychic 



