Fauci's NIH Being Sued for Withholding Details on Cruel Animal Testing
Count me among the Americans who miss the days before I knew who Anthony Fauci was— but if there’s one thing we can be thankful for given his desperate attempt to extend his 15 minutes of fame, it’s the corruption that has been revealed under that spotlight.
Even the most ardent opponents of big government were unlikely to be hyper-aware of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or the unelected bureaucrats at its helm, pre-COVID. And, as is often the case, it has become rapidly apparent that this agency used that irrelevancy to carry out all kinds of no-good deeds for years.
As questions about the origins of the coronavirus began to stir, and as many came to believe the disease leaked from an animal-testing lab in China, some also began demanding answers about the NIH’s funding for gain-of-function research. Those questions swiftly revealed that the NIH had indeed funded this very kind of testing (in a round about, closeted way) in the Wuhan lab.
But that’s not the only animal experiments they were funding, not by a long shot. Thanks to the reporting and filing of Freedom of Information Acts by a bipartisan animal welfare group, The White Coat Waste Project (where I am now a Fellow), ‘Beaglegate’ soon made headway.
The scandal revealed horrendous testing being carried out on beagle puppies by the NIH. According to the WCW, “dogs were covered in ticks and flies, de-barked, and poisoned with experimental drugs.” They even exposed NIH-funded tests in which puppies were injected with cocaine.
But somehow it gets even worse.
The WCW says, “In February 2022, we received documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) showing that the NIH was purchasing puppies from disgraced breeder Envigo — at a cost to taxpayers of $1,300 per dog. According to records obtained by White Coat Waste Project (WCW), the 2-year-old beagles had pneumonia-causing bacteria forced directly into their lungs to cause septic shock, then NIH white coats waited to see how long the dogs lived. If they made it over 96 hours, they were considered ‘survivors,’ and then killed.”
Absolutely disgusting.
Despite the public outcry over this scandal, and the work of many lawmakers spanning the political gap to defund such heinous and senseless experiments, the NIH is still trying to run its same old game.
After filing yet another round of FOIAs seeking more information on these experiments with Envigo purchased dogs, the NIH went silent and refused to communicate with WCW or hand over the information. They don’t have the right to do that.
So in response, WCW has filed two lawsuits against the NIH demanding answers and information. We know taxpayers are still being forced to fund animal abuse at this agency and it’s high time the people be given the full facts on this situation.
We already have strong indications of what will follow when Americans do finally get such information about these practices and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture for the NIH.
https://twitter.com/WhiteCoatWaste/status/1550802783439298560
Advocacy from Congressional leaders like Sens. Rand Paul and Joni Ernst, and Rep. Nancy Mace, has already led to the cancellation of $1.8 million in taxpayer dollars on a series of five painful experiments on puppies Fauci’s agency had planned. And the pressure is on via bills like the PAAW Act to further curtail the government’s ability to run these kinds of tests.
In Virginia, thanks to a series of bills signed by Governor Glenn Youngkin to ensure animal welfare in the state, the first of around 4,000 beagles have been saved from Engivo and will be transferred to local shelters. That effort was also the result of advocacy and investigations by WCW.
As WCW often points out, “Nobody conducts and funds more animal experiments than white coats in the federal government — and no one in the federal government does more animal experiments than the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which spends around half of its 40-plus-billion-dollar budget on animal experiments.”
You would be hard pressed to find an American who supports this kind of animal torture. It’s time to demand answers and laws that defang these government white coats.
Disclaimer: Hannah is a fellow for the White Coat Waste Project, which works against taxpayer funding for animal experimentation.
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