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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is facing a congressional probe after reports emerged alleging the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) spent millions of taxpayer dollars on a cruel experiment, injecting beagle puppies with cocaine.
The non-profit watchdog organization White Coat Waste Project (WCW) reported on another cruel experiment allegedly funded by taxpayers. According to WCW’s findings, via a Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] request, “seven 6-month-old beagle puppies were trained to wear a jacket” which “served a cruel purpose: to inject the animal wearing it with drugs.” Puppies were then dosed with cocaine repeatedly “for months” with what WCW described as an “‘experimental compound,’ to see how the two drugs interacted”:
The experiment, which ran from September 2020 to September 2021 (with a report due May 2022), was filmed, so experimenters could see if the puppies had any “adverse reactions” to the drugs. Prior to being drugged, the dogs were also forced to undergo surgery, where they were implanted with a “telemetry unit” to monitor their vital signs throughout the experiment.
That was not the only experiment, either:
A second experiment, which ran from March 2020 until March 2021, also used special jackets to inject beagles with cocaine. Six puppies were used in these experiments.
Why do the same experiment twice? Why even do it once? We don’t know — but what we do know is that you’re footing the bill. These two experiments cost taxpayers over $2.3 million dollars.
According to WCW, researchers either killed the “coke hounds” after the experiment or shipped them away to be used for other experiments:
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is now leading the investigation into these allegations, sending a letter to Nora D. Volkow, director of NIDA, informing her of their concerns.
“The documents state that the supposed purpose of these cocaine experiments on puppies was to generate a report that ‘may be submitted by NIDA to the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration].’ However, the FDA itself has recently indicated that it ‘does not mandate that human drugs be studied in dogs,’” they wrote, citing the reporting from WCW as well as the revelations made by the FOIA requests.
“Nevertheless, despite the FDA’s assertion, these NIDA documents state that, ‘this study is required by a relevant government regulatory agency,’” the lawmakers, led by Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Brendan Boyle (D-PA), continued.
“We are concerned that NIDA is spending tax dollars on dog testing that is cruel, costly, outdated and that the FDA has claimed is unnecessary,” they wrote, requesting her answers to the following questions by February 16, 2022:
- How much taxpayer money has been spent on dog testing under contract number HHSN271201800019I to date?
- Has all dog testing being conducted under contract HHSN271201800019I been completed? If so, on what date? If not, what dog tests are still ongoing or scheduled?
- Since the FDA has stated that it does not require dog testing for new drugs, why did NIDA commission testing on puppies specifically?
- What, if anything, did NIDA do to work with the FDA to explore non-animal alternatives to meet data requirements? Please describe in detail.
This is far from the first time the NIH has come under scrutiny for cruel puppy experiments. In October, reports surfaced accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci’s division of the NIH, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), of partially funding an experiment allowing hungry, diseased sandflies to eat beagle puppies alive. However, the Washington Post later stated that researchers “mistakenly listed NIAID as a funder when they published a paper in a scientific journal in late July,” prompting the journal to issue a correction October 26. WCW spokesman Justin Goodman, however, referred to the explanation as all “too convenient.”
WCW also obtained FOIA documents which found the NIAID funding an experiment “which involved injecting puppies with a mutant bacteria and allowing hundreds of ticks to feast upon them,” as Breitbart News detailed.
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