BeagleGate is growing.
On Friday, a half-dozen Republican senators, led by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, demanded answers from Dr. Anthony Fauci over the “inhumane experiments” Fauci’s agency conducted on beagle puppies.
The letter was issued the same day the White Coat Waste Project, or WCW, revealed a fifth experiment on dogs conducted by Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID.
In the latest bit of so-called research, according to WCW, the NIAID paid to have 6-month-old beagle puppies injected with a “mutant” variant of a tick-transmitted bacteria that was manufactured in a lab.
Within days of being infected, researchers unleashed up to 250 ticks to feast on each dog for up to a week. The puppies’ blood is then tested twice a week, for eight weeks.
After which, the dogs are killed.
The WCW says up to 138 dogs could have been killed during this research since 2008. The experiment, which has cost taxpayers $5.6 million so far, is expected to run another three years.
The experiment was to better understand how the ticks spread a bacteria called ehrlichiosis, which according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, affected about 2,100 people in 2019. The illness, which causes fever, chills, severe headaches, muscle aches, and nausea, kills about 1 percent of the people it infects.
Paul and the other senators, though, are demanding answers on a different experiment.
In that one, the NIAID spent $1.7 million for research involving 44 beagle puppies between six and eight months old. The canines were repeatedly injected with, or force-fed, an experimental drug and then were killed and dissected, according to WCW.
WCW also reported that the dogs’ vocal cords were cut so their barking could not be heard during the tests.
What made the research troubling is that the Food and Drug Administration recommended against it, since the agency does not advocate using dogs for experiments involving human drugs.
In their letter, the senators wanted to know if the FDA required these tests, if the agency asked the NIAID if there another method existed besides using dogs, and did the FDA mandate the cutting of vocal cords.
Besides Paul, the inquiring lawmakers include Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Susan Collins of Maine, Roger Marshall of Kansas, and Mike Braun of Indiana.
The WCW, which opposes unnecessary taxpayer-funded research on animals, has in recent weeks revealed that Fauci’s agency has spent roughly $25 million over the last 15 years on what it calls “wasteful and cruel” experiments on hundreds of dogs, which were ultimately killed.
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