Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, can add a new title to his curriculum vitae: Lord of the Flies.
The latest on the disgraced octogenarian is that his agency drugged beagle pups, then let the nasty bugs eat them alive.
It isn’t bad enough that Fauci’s outfit funded dangerous gain-of-function research on bat viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which enabled the microbes to infect humans, then lied about it to a Senate committee.
Now this: Puppy torture.
The revelation from the White Coat Waste Project unspooled into the news cycle late last week after sitting dormant since July. Now, two dozen congressmen want to know what Fauci and his gang of mad scientists are doing with American tax money.
The watchdog outfit has also disclosed that NIAID spent almost $2 million poisoning and “debarking” beagle pups.
The Experiment
“Fauci just spent $424,000 to commission a study in which healthy beagles are given an experimental drug and then intentionally infested with flies that carry a disease-causing parasite that affects humans,” WCW reported in July.
Researchers wrote that puppies were “vocalizing in pain.” Barking in agony might be more like it.
As well, “experimenters admit this investigational drug, ‘has been extensively tested and confirmed … in different animal models such as mice.… Mongolian gerbils … and rhesus macaques.’”
That cruel research was done in Georgia.
Fauci’s lab sent $375,000 to Tunisia, where researchers tested a drug that let sandflies eat the dogs alive. “The experimenters starved the flies so they’re hungry and ‘the sand flies were then allowed to feed on the sedated dogs,” WCW reported in August:
The sickos also locked beagles alone in cages in the desert overnight for nine consecutive nights to use them as bait to attract infectious sand flies.
Total bill to torture these two groups of beagle pups: $799,000.
In May, WCW project reported that NIAID “wastes millions of your tax dollars to conduct maximum pain experiments that subject animals to excruciatingly painful procedures and then intentionally withhold pain relief.”
In April, WCW disclosed that NIAID has funded cruel animal experiments at WIV, the same place that received U.S. taxpayer money to turn naturally occurring bat viruses into superbugs that can be used as bioweapons.
And here’s an even more bizarre revelation from WCW, this one about taxpayer funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture:
As recently as 2015 the agency was buying live animals at wet markets, having them slaughtered, and bringing their body parts back to the United States for experiments. One gruesome detail among many: The cats’ and dogs’ body parts were transported in carry-on luggage. Then they were fed to cats in USDA labs, who were made to be “kitten cannibals” for bizarre and useless experiments.
That aside, early this month, WCW disclosed that NIAID spent $1.68 million on the poisoning and “debarking.” That torture involved “44 beagle puppies who were just 6-8 months old [and] repeatedly injected with or force-fed an experimental drug for weeks, and then killed and dissected.”
The Letter
Understandably, Congress wants answers, not least because the Food and Drug Administration does not require drug testing on dogs.
“Of particular concern is the fact that the invoice to NIAID included a line item for ‘cordectomy,’ GOP Representative Nancy Mace of North Carolina wrote with 23 others:
As you are likely aware, a cordectomy, also known as “devocalization,” involves slitting a dog’s vocal cords in order to prevent them from barking, howling, or crying. This cruel procedure — which is opposed with rare exceptions by the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Animal Hospital Association, and others — seems to have been performed so that experimenters would not have to listen to the pained cries of the beagle puppies. This is a reprehensible misuse of taxpayer funds.
While documents state that the ostensible purpose of this study was “to provide data of suitable quality and integrity to support application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory agencies,” the FDA itself has recently stated that it does not mandate that human drugs be studied in dogs.” This is apparently not the first time that NIAID has commissioned drug tests on dogs in recent years.
The congressmen want to know by November 19 how much tax money Fauci’s outfit has spent on the drug tests, and how much it costs for each unnecessary cordectomy.
They also want to know whether the dogs are available for adoption after an experiment ends. “If so, how many?” they asked. “If no, why not?”
The highest-paid federal employee at $417,608 as of 2019, Fauci has run NIAID since 1984. How much longer he will remain in command is unknown.