The National Institutes of Health is once again under fire—this time for continuing taxpayer-funded dog experiments that many believed had ended. Despite public pledges to reduce animal testing, Biden-Obama loyalists inside the agency are funneling tens of millions into painful, outdated procedures.
Trump Admin Had Shut It Down. Deep State Brought It Back.
Under President Trump, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Navy, and EPA ended dog testing in response to watchdog exposés. But insiders from the Obama and Biden years never left the NIH—and they’ve been quietly reviving the horror.
Investigators from White Coat Waste Project (WCW) exposed brutal experiments where beagles were infested with ticks and sandflies, drugged, and had their vocal cords removed so they couldn’t cry out. These aren’t old cases. They’re still happening—with your tax dollars.
In 2021, Americans were rightly disgusted by reports of puppies suffering and dying in taxpayer-funded labs. But under new NIH leadership, those experiments continue—despite lofty promises to “phase them out.”
$1.3 Billion and Counting—New NIH Boss Still Funding Animal Abuse
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the NIH’s new director, claimed in April that the agency would shift toward “human-based” testing methods. But since then, nine new dog research grants totaling over $12 million have been approved. Even worse, another nine existing grants were extended, with $42 million in continued funding.
That’s on top of roughly 193 active experiments on dogs and cats, costing taxpayers a shocking $1.3 billion.
Fauci funded the torture and killing of beagles.
Trump's EPA head Lee Zeldin just reinstated a phaseout of animal testing begun in the first Trump admin, but killed by Biden. pic.twitter.com/fGYajtSgGp
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 13, 2025
One new test includes force-feeding meth treatment drugs to dogs for up to a year. Others involve injecting beagles with cocaine, electroshocking puppies, and even drilling screws into their skulls. Some tests involve strapping containers of mutant ticks to their skin—without pain relief.
GOP Pushes Back While PETA and NIH Stay Silent
Eleven members of Congress, led by Rep. Paul Gosar, sent a demand letter to NIH leadership, calling the tests “disturbing” and “barbaric.” They called for three actions:
Cancel all Fauci-era experiments,
ban all new harmful dog and cat tests, and
fully disclose the NIH’s current animal testing budget.
Their concerns stem from the same pattern: animal torture dressed up as science, carried forward by entrenched officials who outlast every administration.
Footage from an animal lab that was funded by the NIH shows disturbing treatment of test on beagles.
The American public has unwilling funded the torture and killing of beagles in government-backed experiments for over 70 years. https://t.co/t8CEyDw74x pic.twitter.com/cnSIkkPfYV
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) May 5, 2025
Even left-wing outlet The Guardian covered the backlash, joining conservative voices like Laura Loomer in condemning the NIH’s actions. Loomer published video evidence showing beagle puppies being tortured in University of Missouri labs. The footage was so graphic that X age-restricted the video.
She blasted the NIH for awarding that same lab another $598,000 to continue until 2030, bringing the total funding for the facility to over $23 million.
Fauci’s Legacy of Pain Still Haunts NIH
According to Gosar’s letter, the NIH is also continuing THC tests on monkeys, Fauci’s infamous “Monkey Island” experiments, and tick infections on beagles—all part of Fauci-era policies that the public assumed had ended.
White Coat Waste remains the only advocacy group to shut down federal primate, cat, and dog testing labs in decades. Yet the fight continues.
The question isn’t whether these tests are inhumane—it’s why they’re still being funded. And the answer, it seems, lies in the bureaucrats left behind after Trump left office.
Sources
Biden’s new biomedical agency fails to gain independence from NIH | Science | AAAS
Tracking turnover in the Biden administration | Brookings