A federal agency led by Dr. Anthony Fauci provided taxpayer funding to researchers who planned to infect beagles and test an experimental drug on them.
The Daily Caller reported that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), of which Fauci is the director, directed $424,455 in taxpayer funds to the University of Georgia last September “to infect dozens of beagles with disease-causing parasites in order to test an experimental drug on them.”
The grant was discovered by the White Coat Waste Project (WCW) and is set to end on January 15, 2022.
“According to an NIAID task order form released via a Freedom Of Information Act request, the 28 beagles were to be allowed to develop infections for three months before being euthanized for blood collection,” the Caller reported. “The dog experiments are set to be completed by January 2022, however, the task order states that the beagles are to be euthanized 196 days after the start of the study. According to emails obtained by WCW, the study began on Nov. 12, 2020, meaning the beagles would have been scheduled to be euthanized in June 2021.”
The Caller attempted to discover whether the beagles had already been euthanized, but received no response from NIAID or Dr. Andrew Moorhead, who was set to lead the study at the University of Georgia.
The revelation of this government-funded research comes after Fauci, NIAID, and the National Institutes of Health have been criticized in recent months for abusive animal testing using taxpayer-funded grants, especially after questions regarding Fauci’s role in gain of function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Justin Goodman, vice president of advocacy and public policy at the WCW, told the Caller that Wuhan isn’t the only place where NIAID dollars ended up as part of questionable research.
“Fauci’s budget has ballooned to over $6 billion in taxpayer funding annually, at least half of which is being wasted on more questionable animal experimentation like these deadly and unnecessary beagle tests and other maximum pain experiments,” Goodman told the outlet.
WCW also noted that monthly reports from the beagle experiment show the dogs were “vocalizing in pain” after they were injected with the experimental drug.
The Caller noted that the experimental drug given to the beagles, LFGuard, has already been tested extensively on other animals, raising questions as to why this experiment was needed. The outlet did not receive an answer to this question either from NIAID or Moorhead.
“Fauci’s budget has ballooned to over $6 billion in taxpayer funding annually, at least half of which is being wasted on more questionable animal experimentation like these deadly and unnecessary beagle tests and other maximum pain experiments.”
As the Caller concluded: “Members of Congress earlier this year called for increased transparency on Food and Drug Administration (FDA) animal testing after WCW revealed that around 20,000 dogs per year are used in FDA experiments, many of which scientists say are unnecessary and harmful to the animals involved.”