Dr. Anthony Fauci may be gone.
But some House Republicans want to make sure he, and his animal experiments, are not forgotten anytime soon.
GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina on Thursday sent a letter to Dr. Lawrence Tabak, the acting director of the National Institutes of Health, asking why Fauci’s agency spent $1.8 million for testing involving dogs when utilizing dogs for scientific experiments “was obviously scientifically unnecessary and not required by law.”
Mace cited the work of the watchdog group White Coat Waste Project, which, as The Free Press has reported, has sued Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, for failing to release more details of research with canines.
Florida Republican Reps. Greg Steube, Brian Mast, and Bill Posey joined Mace in issuing the letter to Tabak.
In her letter, Mace noted that the signers have become “increasingly concerned” about the NIH’s funding of “outdated and inhumane testing on puppies and dogs.”
The congresswoman pointed out that NIAID recently canceled “unnecessary” planned drug tests on dogs. That, she added, “underscores the wastefulness of taxpayer-funded dog experimentation and raises serious questions about NIH’s oversight of grants and contracts.”
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For example, she cited a $1.8 million contract for five separate experiments on dogs to test a new drug to treat hay fever.
Records NIAID released to the White Coat Waste Project revealed that the contractor proposed using a “non-dog” model after news broke about the agency’s “puppy tests,” Mace observed and that NIAID retreated to perform the experiments using an “alternative model.”
Mace observed that the Food and Drug Administration has publicly stated that dog testing for new drugs is not required. Accordingly, NIAID’s recent “about-face begs the question: why did NIAID intend to use taxpayer dollars to fund cruel dog tests that were completely unnecessary and not required from the outset?”
She added that this was not an isolated incident.
In October 2021, a bipartisan group of 24 lawmakers questioned Fauci’s puppy-testing for new drugs, and in February another bipartisan contingent of 16 legislators asked the National Institute on Drug Abuse about using dogs to evaluate a drug to treat cocaine abuse.
Mace maintained that cutting funding for experimentation on dogs is backed by both sides. Meanwhile, other federal agencies, such as the FDA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Veterans Affairs have already launched “laudable efforts to curb testing on dogs and other animals.”
As it stands, Mace wrote that the NIH, which has “no apparent plan in place to reduce inefficient and painful testing on dogs, has become “an outlier” — which, she added, “is is particularly notable given that the NIH has frequently acknowledged the wastefulness of animal testing.”
The lawmakers asked Tabak to identify: which NIH offices and officials oversee contracts for animal experiments; how many dogs and taxpayer dollars have been used for NIH-funded drug tests over the past five years; whether the NIH discussed with the FDA how to curtail drug testing on dogs; and what specific steps the NIH is taking internally to not use of dogs in taxpayer-funded experiments.
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In response to Mace’s letter, Desiree Bender, campaign manager for the White Coat Waste Project, said in a statement, “A growing majority of Democrat and Republican taxpayers oppose government animal experiments and they shouldn’t be forced to pay mad scientists in white coats millions of dollars to torment and kill dogs and puppies in wasteful drug tests.”
“WCW’s #Beaglegate campaign has exposed how Dr. Fauci and other NIH bureaucrats are wasting tax dollars on experiments in the U.S. and abroad where puppies are infested with hundreds of biting flies and blood-sucking ticks, injected with cocaine, force-fed experimental drugs, and even have their vocal cords cut out so they can’t cry out in the lab. This summer, we worked with Rep. Nancy Mace and Sen. Joni Ernst to expose and cancel plans for a series of new Fauci-funded experimental drug tests on puppies, but the agency has continued to squander Americans’ hard-earned money on other inhumane and inefficient dog tests even though the FDA has said they’re unnecessary,” Bender added.
“We applaud Rep. Mace for her outstanding leadership on ending the NIH’s secretive spending on wasteful dog experiments. The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness!”
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