Vile: NIH Allegedly Spent $2.5 Million Pumping Beagles Full of Cocaine, Congress Investigating
An agency that works under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health is under fire for spending $2.5 million on experiments that pumped cocaine into beagle puppies, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
The outlet reported Friday that the National Institute on Drug Abuse conducted a study in which beagle puppies were forcibly injected with cocaine after being given an experimental drug to see how the drugs reacted.
A bipartisan congressional coalition is now investigating, the report said, with Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania taking the lead.
“As an animal lover and long-time animal rights supporter, I was really disturbed to hear about cruel cocaine-fueled experiments being conducted on six-month-old puppies and paid for by our tax dollars,” Mace said in a statement on Friday.
“This testing is inhumane, unnecessary and not to mention expensive. These experiments have cost taxpayers $2.5 million dollars. Even the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has stated it ‘does not mandate human drugs be studied in dogs.’ So, why are we doing this?” she said.
“In the year 2022, surely we can find ways to obtain laboratory data that do not involve injecting puppies with cocaine,” Boyle said. “The methods currently utilized by NIDA are cruel and outdated and are being conducted with taxpayer dollars. I am proud to help lead this effort with my House colleagues to fix this broken and unnecessary operating procedure at NIDA.”
The White Coat Waste Project, a watchdog group, said on its website that the beagles were given special jackets in the experiment.
“Through this special drug-injecting jacket, puppies were dosed with cocaine again and again and again for months, along with an ‘experimental compound,’ to see how the two drugs interacted,” the group said. “The experiment, which ran from September 2020 to September 2021 (with a report due May 2022), was filmed, so experimenters could see if the puppies had any ‘adverse reactions’ to the drugs.
“Prior to being drugged, the dogs were also forced to undergo surgery, where they were implanted with a ‘telemetry unit’ to monitor their vital signs throughout the experiment.
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“At the end of the experiment, the ‘coke hounds’ were either killed or ‘recycled’ — meaning they were shipped off to be used in other wasteful, cruel, and unnecessary experiments.
Justin Goodman, senior vice president of advocacy of public policy at White Coat Waste, said the congressional investigation is essential.
“Animal lovers and liberty lovers can agree that taxpayers should not be forced to pay $2 million for beagle puppies to be injected with cocaine just to fulfill outdated FDA red tape,” Goodman said in a statement, according to the Free Beacon.
“We’re grateful to Reps. Boyle, Mace, and their colleagues for sticking up for taxpayers and puppies and demanding answers from the NIH about its wasteful and cruel spending on dog experiments. As our ‘Coke Hound’ investigation has shown, the NIH is addicted to spending and taxpayers in both parties want it to stop.”
My heart hurts. https://t.co/aSTNwmNHVw
— Erielle Davidson (@politicalelle) February 4, 2022
This is not the first time the NIH has been in hot water for animal experimentation.
In December, Daphna Nachminovitch, senior cruelty investigations vice president for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said the Department of Agriculture was investigating a company that provided the animals for grisly experiments on beagle puppy experiments.
The NIH spends approximately $19.6 billion annually to finance experiments on animals, according to Nachminovitch.
Asked by Fox News why beagles are the choice animals for such experimentation, she said, “Beagles are small and docile. They’re such gentle, loyal dogs, and unfortunately they are so submissive that they’re easy to torture without posing a public safety risk to their abusers.”
In addition, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, has come under fire for spending $13.5 million to experiment on rhesus monkeys.
An Op-Ed published Friday in the Washington Examiner by Mace and Goodman presented a fuller indictment of the NIH and its offshoots.
“Details of NIAID’s puppy tests uncovered by the White Coat Waste Project are disturbing,” they wrote. “Fauci’s division spent $1.68 million in taxpayer funds on experiments involving 44 beagle puppies as young as 6 months old.
“The puppies were force-fed experimental drugs before being killed and dissected. NIAID has admitted that the puppies’ vocal cords were barbarically cut in order to prevent them from barking in the lab.
“In other Fauci-funded experiments that have cost taxpayers over $5 million to date, puppies have been infested with hundreds of ticks by strapping capsules full of the insects to their bare skin to study an illness that’s already preventable and treatable.
“At the end of the tests, the beagles are killed, even though they’re healthy and could be adopted out.”
“In yet another project with a price tag of $6 million, puppies have been treated ostensibly as heartworm factories and killed so the worms can be harvested and used in other experiments,” they wrote, noting that the NIH admits 90 percent of drugs that are effective in animal tests fail in human trials.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
