The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, is facing mounting criticism from across the political spectrum for its ongoing and newly funded experiments involving dogs.
Despite pledges from new leadership to reduce animal testing, recent revelations highlight persistent funding for controversial labs, sparking outrage from conservative figures like investigative journalist Laura Loomer and liberal-leaning outlets like The Guardian.
This bipartisan backlash underscores a rare consensus: taxpayer dollars should not support cruel and unnecessary animal abuse.
“Information obtained by…White Coat Waste shows that the NIH has in fact funded millions of dollars’ worth of new animal experiments…NIH has approved nine new grants for dog research since their April announcement, costing the taxpayer over $12M”
NIH under fire for funding… pic.twitter.com/4Zt3gFzBXg
— White Coat Waste (@WhiteCoatWaste) July 16, 2025
The NIH’s use of animals in research has long been a contentious issue, particularly following exposés during the tenure of former director Dr. Anthony Fauci. In 2021, the nonprofit White Coat Waste Project (WCW) uncovered and The Gateway Pundit reported on NIH-funded experiments where beagles were infested with sandflies and had their vocal cords removed to prevent barking during painful procedures.
The Trump administration has prioritized ending the barbaric practice.
Trump’s Navy, Department of Veterans Affairs, and EPA have already eliminated such testing in direct response to WCW’s investigations. Holdovers from the Obama and Biden Administrations appear to be preventing this kind of progress at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
“Trump hates waste and animal experimentation is the poster child for wasteful spending. The best place to start would be to cut funding for animal labs which make up 40% of the NIH budget. It’s outdated, expensive, there’s little return for taxpayers and the American people don’t want pets tortured,” WCW Vice President Justin Goodman told The Guardian.
In April, the new NIH Director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, announced an initiative to prioritize “human-based technologies,” such as organ-on-a-chip models and AI-driven tools, aiming to address the high failure rate of animal-tested drugs in human trials, estimated at 95%. Deputy Director Dr. Nicole Kleinstreuer echoed this sentiment in a recent NIH podcast, calling dog and cat testing “unconscionable” and pledging to phase it out. However, critics argue these promises ring hollow, as the NIH has not only extended existing grants but also approved new ones under Bhattacharya and Kleinstreuer’s watch.
In a recent video, NIH’s @NKleinstreuer & @NIHDirector_Jay say active grant $ for dog & cat tests “predates them” & “legal constraints” force them to keep funding them (not true).
But, what’s their excuse for the many new dog experiments that NIH started funding on their watch? https://t.co/ChNQgEnGCL pic.twitter.com/fSEKdYANpD
— Justin Goodman (@JustinRGoodman) July 16, 2025
The Guardian reports:
Analysis of project documents and those obtained through Freedom of Information Act (Foia) requests reveal that the NIH has approved nine new grants for dog research since their April announcement, costing the taxpayer over $12m, as well as extending about nine already active, with total study costs of $42m. WCW says these are in addition to the approximately 193 ongoing NIH-funded dog and cat studies, costing about $1.3bn.
New experiments uncovered by WCW include toxicology testing of an investigational drug to treat methamphetamine addiction. Toxicology tests often involve force-feeding or injecting dogs with increasingly large doses of a compound daily for up to a year.
Extended research includes a cocaine experiment to study cardiovascular effects. This involves beagles being strapped into jackets that inject them with cocaine as well as being force-fed an experimental drug to see how the two drugs interact. Another vaccine experiment involves infecting beagle puppies with viruses by strapping containers full of “mutant” ticks to their bare skin, sometimes with pain relief intentionally withheld.
Likewise, Loomer and WCW obtained exclusive videos showing golden retrievers, dachshunds, and other dogs suffering and dying in the University of Missouri laboratories that are funded with millions of our tax dollars by the NIH.
Loomer wrote, “These NIH-funded monsters start experimenting on these poor puppies when they are less than a week old. The dogs get injections directly into their eyeballs, they have their muscles exposed and electroshocked, and some have holes and screws drilled into their skulls.”
The video is so graphic that X has age-restricted it, which prevents it from being embedded in this article. You can view it on X here.
This is sickening. There is zero excuse for our tax dollars to fund torture labs for puppies.
If NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and Deputy Director Nicole Kleinstreuer are serious about ending this cruelty, they need to shut these labs down now, not drag it out for years.
— Camryn Kinsey (@camrynbaylee) July 16, 2025
“Jay Bhattacharya’s NIH just gave this lab another $598,000 and extended its funding for another 5 years, allowing it to abuse dogs until 2030. These deadly dog tests have received over $23 million in taxpayer funding already,” Loomer added.
The conservative firebrand also took aim at PETA for applauding Bhattacharya and Kleinstreuer, as “NIH has given out millions of dollars in funding to start up brand new experiments on dogs.”
WCW remains the only animal advocacy organization to shut down any government primate lab in nearly a decade, any government dog testing labs in almost 20 years, and any government cat lab in the last 40 years.
Earlier this month, eleven members of Congress signed a letter requesting that the National Institutes of Health end its funding for barbaric dog and cat experiments approved under Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Writing to Bhattacharya, the House lawmakers, led by Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, demanded the immediate cancellation of all Fauci-funded dog and cat experiments. Citing WCW’s evidence, they blasted the NIH for “disturbing” tests, including a $10 million UNC-Chapel Hill project that breeds hemophiliac puppies only to slaughter them post-experiment. “We are sending this request with considerable urgency,” the lawmakers wrote, signaling a zero-tolerance stance on the NIH’s animal cruelty.
The letter cited Gateway Pundit’s exclusive report about how the NIH, under Director Bhattacharya, has renewed millions in funding for controversial experiments, including THC tests on monkeys at Harvard, tick bites on beagle puppies, and Anthony Fauci’s notorious “Monkey Island.”
“Ongoing investigations by the non-profit group White Coat Waste have documented how the NIH continues to renew and fund dozens of Dr. Fauci’s disturbing experiments on dogs and cats in labs around the world, in which animals are infested with insects, infected with viruses, force-fed experimental drugs, and killed,” the letter states.
Gosar laid out three ironclad demands to dismantle Dr. Anthony Fauci’s legacy of cruel animal testing. First, they requested that the NIH immediately cancel all active funding for dog and cat experiments approved under his tenure. Second, they insisted on a blanket prohibition of all new NIH grants for harmful dog and cat testing, aiming to choke off future atrocities. Finally, they demanded full transparency, asking the NIH to disclose all current taxpayer funding for these experiments, exposing the scope of the agency’s gruesome practices to public scrutiny.
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