Controversy stirs around Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, after the nonprofit group White Coat Waste Project released documents that appeared to prove funding of experiments on beagles in Tunisia. These allegations resulted in #FauciLiedDogsDied becoming the top trending hashtag on Twitter on Oct. 18. Now, there are bipartisan calls for Fauci to respond.
According to the documents, NIAID provided $1.68 million in taxpayer funds to a lab running drug tests on 44 beagles. The documents allege that these experiments include injecting the dogs with parasites, locking their heads in cages with hungry sandflies, and “de-barking” them by cutting their vocal cords, all before killing and dissecting them.
“We write with grave concerns about reports of costly, cruel, and unnecessary taxpayer-funded experiments on dogs commissioned by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,” bipartisan lawmakers wrote in a letter to Fauci on Oct. 22.
Animal rights group Beagle Freedom Project wrote a subsequent letter to Fauci on Oct. 27, calling for the tests to be halted and the dogs released.
“Bearing witness to what you and your organization do to these animals is nothing short of criminal,” Beagle Freedom Project president and founder Shannon Keith wrote. “It is time to end it, and now the world is watching. If it does not end immediately, the Beagle Freedom Project will make sure it becomes criminal, and those who perpetrate it will be punished by law.” Keith cited the FDA Modernization Act of 1997, which ended an outdated mandate requiring experimental drugs to be tested on animals. Keith wrote, “If science and wasteful taxpayer spending are not enough to convince you, perhaps legal changes will.”