A government spending watchdog group has filed two lawsuits against the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for refusal to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
WCW is seeking additional information on taxpayer funding behind what it called NIAID’s “cruel and barbaric” experiments on beagles and monkeys.
WCW
filed the two lawsuits (
pdf) to compel NIAID, which falls under the leadership of Dr. Anthony Fauci, to turn over the requested records.
Justin Goodman, vice president of advocacy and public policy for WCW, told The Epoch Times he believes information WCW previously retrieved through FOIA requests is “just the tip of the iceberg.”
“We’ve repeatedly found that Fauci’s division has been spending tax dollars on these unnecessary tests, so we’re trying to determine the full scale and scope of the waste abuse happening at NIAID,” Goodman said. “We believe there’s millions more in wasteful spending that hasn’t been uncovered yet.”
In both lawsuits, WCW alleges NIAID has wrongfully withheld records seeking items such as toxicology reports, photographs, and unedited videos.
‘Excruciating Experiments’
WCW has reported on several taxpayer-funded animal experiments conducted by NIAID based on FOIA-obtained documents.Documents have shown that NIAID
spent $1.68 million in taxpayer funds for animal experimentation that involved force-feeding 44 beagle puppies between six and eight months old with an experimental drug for several weeks, before killing and dissecting them.
In February 2022, WCW obtained the
documents disclosing that the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), which itself—in addition to NIAID—is a part of NIH, spent $2.3 million in taxpayer funds to keep dogs infused with an “experimental compound” of drugs that included cocaine.
In November 2021, WCW obtained documents revealing that
NIAID had spent $13.5 million in taxpayer funding on experiments that involve injecting monkeys with various infectious diseases, such as Ebola and the Lassa virus that results in hemorrhaging, pain, brain damage, loss of motor control, and organ failure.
“In many of these experiments, Fauci and staff intentionally withhold pain relief, even though these are some of the most excruciating experiments in the federal government,” Goodman said.
NIAID was also reported to be conducting “fear experiments” on the monkeys that involved testing the extent to which they could withstand traumatic experiences before death.
WCW reported that the NIH spent about $140 million on animal experiments in foreign countries in 2020, with a total of 353 labs in 57 countries worldwide that are authorized to receive U.S. taxpayer funds, including countries classified as foreign adversaries like China and Russia.
Congressional Response
Legislation introduced by
Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) on Aug. 10 proposes to prohibit NIH’s experiments on dogs paid for by taxpayer dollars.
Since WCW’s investigations, Steube has been an outspoken critic of Fauci and has repeatedly asked for the director to step down.
In a 2021
opinion piece, Steube said, “Between his mishandling of COVID-19 and the unconscionably cruel animal experiments, this man must be held accountable—and he must resign immediately.”
In August 2022, Fauci
announced that he is resigning as director of the NIAID, chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden in December.
In March 2022 amid U.S. sanctions against the Russian Federation, Congresswoman
Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) wrote to President Joe Biden demanding that he block further government spending on Russian labs.
McClain
introduced a proposal called the Accountability in Foreign Animal Research (AFAR) Act to prohibit lab funding in countries that have been named as adversaries, which include China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea.
In December 2021,
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced the Preventing Animal Abuse and Waste (PAAW) Act of 2021 that would prohibit Fauci from conducting or supporting research that could result in death, irreversible damage, significant pain, or distress to dogs.
The bill, which has bipartisan support, also requires that NIAID report to Congress on ongoing dog experiments, its plan to phase out dog testing, and how much money is being spent on the experiments.
In October 2021, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers began to
demand answers from Fauci after WCW published one of its several rounds of reports spotlighting NIAID’s experiments on animals.
‘Stop the Money and Stop the Madness’
WCW’s reporting hasn’t gone unnoticed by federal departments.
In November 2022, the Department of Veterans Affairs, in response to “relentless campaigning, lobbying, lawsuits, and investigations,” ended its dog experiments at its Richmond, Virginia, lab.
WCW reported that scientists at the lab were injecting latex into puppies’ arteries, drilling holes into beagles’ skulls, collapsing the lungs of “friendly” dogs, cutting out living dogs’ hearts, injecting Dobermans with methamphetamines, and forcing hounds to run on a treadmill in heart-attack tests.
In July, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) confirmed that Fauci’s National Institute of Health (NIH) division would be canceling $1.8 million in taxpayer funds that were going to be used for experiments in which allergy drugs would be tested on beagle puppies.
After publishing its reports, former President Donald Trump terminated NIH’s funding for the project studying how coronaviruses spread from bats to people.
In 2019, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) ended experiments on cats that had been taking place for decades with taxpayer funding after WCW
published findings showing that the department had been purchasing live cats and dogs from meat markets overseas for experiments that involved killing and feeding them to cats and mice.
NIAID didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
“Our new lawsuit will expose Fauci’s secret spending on wasteful, widely-opposed animal tests so that we can stop the money and stop the madness,” Goodman said.
