Ciggyfree Blog

MINDEN - Students of Piñon Hills Elementary School expressed both wonder and disgust when Victor DeNoble walked around showing them a piece of a human brain.

“It looks pretty cool but kind of disgusting,” said fourth-grader Timothy Cadaret at the presentation.

DeNoble, a former tobacco scientist for Philip Morris, said he approached a 63-year-old hospital patient dying of lung cancer and asked him if he could have his brain after he died. He explained to the patient that he was conducting experiments on the effects of nicotine on the human brain.

“You’re weird,” DeNoble said the patient told him.

The patient said he also hadn’t smoked for two years. But DeNoble, who had been experimenting on rats and monkeys, was convinced that the effects of nicotine on the human brain lasted even after an individual quit smoking.

“The man told me that although he hadn’t smoked in years, he still woke up every morning wanting a cigarette,” DeNoble said.

After the man died, his wife gave DeNoble permission to use his brain for experimentation. DeNoble said his initial hypothesis was right: The man’s brain cells showed nicotine-related alteration even though he hadn’t smoked for years.

“Young people don’t really recognize that nicotine is a drug that changes their brain,” DeNoble said.