A bipartisan group of lawmakers is seeking answers from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), for allegedly funding cruel experiments on dogs.
According to documents obtained by White Coat Waste Project, a nonprofit organization, dozens of beagle puppies were infected with disease-causing parasites in a lab in Tunisia, North Africa, for the purpose of testing an experimental drug. Some of the dogs had their vocal cords removed so that researchers could work without being disturbed.
“Our investigators show that Fauci’s NIH division shipped part of a $375,800 grant to a lab in Tunisia to drug beagles and lock their heads in mesh cages filled with hungry sand flies so that the insects could eat them alive… They also locked beagles alone in cages in the desert overnight for nine consecutive nights to use them as bait to attract infectious sand flies,” White Coat Waste told The Hill.
The group claims that the experiments took place at a National Institutes of Health (NIH) lab run by Fauci. In total, 44 beagle puppies were subjected to harsh experiments. The pooches, between six and eight months old, were injected and force-fed with an experimental drug before being killed and dissected.
The NIAID spent around 1.68 million dollars of taxpayer funds for the experiments. The watchdog also revealed that this is the fourth experiment on beagles funded by the agency.
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Following the exposé, Republican Nancy Mace of South Carolina’s 1st congressional district, along with 23 other lawmakers, penned a letter to Fauci and the NIH demanding answers.
“While documents state that the ostensible purpose of this study was ‘to provide data of suitable quality and integrity to support the application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory agencies,’ the FDA itself has recently stated that it ‘does not mandate that human drugs be studied in dogs,’” the letter stated.
Rep. Mace and the rest of the lawmakers are expecting a response from Fauci and the NIH by Nov. 9. They would like answers as to why the vocal cords of puppies were removed when the surgeries appeared to be scientifically and medically unnecessary.
The lawmakers also want to know how much taxpayer money has been spent and how many experiments involving dogs have been bankrolled by the NIAID since January 2018.
As a human and animal rights activist, Rep. Mace indicated that the incident was personal to her. She hopes to collect as much information as possible about the issue so that similar incidents can be prevented from happening again.
“They’re doing cruel experiments on puppies… What they were doing with those puppies is flat out disgusting. It’s despicable. I cannot believe American tax dollars would go to treat those dogs the way those dogs are being treated,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, said to Florida Politics.
