The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation invited Justin Goodman, Senior Vice President of Advocacy and Public Policy for White Coat Waste Project (WCWP), to discuss taxpayer-funded animal research that has been described as “torture” and “inhumane.” The Thursday hearing was titled Transgender Lab Rats and Poisoned Puppies: Oversight of Taxpayer Funded Animal Cruelty. Dr. Paul Lock, a Department of Environmental Health and Engineering professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, was invited to speak. Elizabeth Baker, director of research policy for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, was also invited to speak.

The witnesses all agreed that taxpayer-funded animal studies are, in many cases, brutal and unnecessary. They talked about the inefficiencies of animal experiments and called for more investment in newer alternative testing methods. Alternative options for testing include in vitro models with cell cultures, computer models with AI, and “organs-on-chips,” a method of creating mini-human organs with human cells.

“While there’s considerable enthusiasm around the promise of these new methodologies unless federal agencies and departments support their development and recognize their promise, they will never be able to reach their full potential,” Dr. Lock said. “We’re not going to be able to replace animals in biomedical research with the meager investments that federal agencies are now making.”

These technologies are considered more reliable for understanding how drugs will interact with humans and don’t involve “barbaric” animal testing. The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) is responsible for reviewing federally-funded animal studies to ensure they are humane and ethical. However, Goodman said they essentially “rubber stamp” any research proposal that comes across the committee. 

“Experiments we’ve uncovered range from the savage to the stupid,” Goodman said. “Injecting puppies with cocaine, staging hamster fight clubs, putting dead turtles on treadmills. One of the reasons this problem has gotten so out of control is a stunning lack of innovation, transparency, and accountability. Agencies do not report or even track in some cases how much money is being spent, how many animals are used, what’s being done to them, where, and what taxpayers are getting out of it.”

Goodman explained that taxpayers fund $20 billion worth of animal studies every year involving “tens of millions of puppies, kittens and other animals” an average of $120 per year paid by each taxpayer in the United States. Federal government health agencies have been aware that animal testing is reliable for at least two decades. A 2023 review of the data states “The failure rate for the translation of drugs from animal testing to human treatments remains at over 92%, where it has been for the past few decades. The majority of these failures are due to unexpected toxicity — that is, safety issues revealed in human trials that were not apparent in animal tests — or lack of efficacy.”

“The scientific questions facing us increasingly call into question our reliance on animal models and demand that we move forward with more human-centric science,” Dr. Lock said. “Federal agencies must play a leadership role in this transition to these new human-centric models.”

WCWP was the first to uncover the United States funding of gain-of-function research in Wuhan. They also uncovered “beagle gate” in which beagle puppies had mesh face coverings with sand flies eating them alive. The experimenters removed the vocal cords of the puppies to avoid hearing their cries. Goodman brought three rescued lab beagles to the hearing.

Goodman explained, “The reason they chose beagles like Nelly, Oliver, and Beasley, the contract states, and quote, ‘beagle dogs are docile, cute, and easy to domesticate so it has been the best choice,’ end quote. Not because it’s effective but because it’s easy.”

“We’ve also recently identified over $240 million in NIH grants for transgender animal experiments including $26 million in active funding,” Goodman said. “Some of these tests, as the chairwoman mentioned, examine the effects of party drugs on animals injected with testosterone and how hormones used for human gender transitions impact the size and shape of animals’ genitals.”

Chairwoman Nancy Mace also provided several examples of these taxpayer-funded experiments. Mace said, “The White Coat Waste Project found in 2021 that the NIH, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a component of NIH at the time run by Dr. Fauci, spent $1.68 million for speeding toxic drugs to beagle puppies between six and eight months old before dissecting and killing them.”

“Federal funds were also used to forcibly transition male monkeys to see if hormone therapy made them more susceptible to HIV,” Mace explained. “Now I didn’t know this until recently, but monkeys cannot be infected with HIV, yet this federally funded experiment forced them to take hormone-altering drugs to study a virus they cannot have.” Mace explained that 95% of this funding came from NIAID, with Dr. Anthony Fauci as the director.

Goodman described a $1 million experiment funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in which marbles were shoved into the rectums of cats, and they were electroshocked to make them defecate. This was an experiment to research constipation. Goodman said there was a cannibalism experiment involving the procurement of kitten meat from Chinese wet markets and feeding them to lab cats in America.

Baker said, “Consider this: since 1991, the NIH has given $15 million to a single heart failure project where dogs are subjected to multiple major surgeries; they have devices that are stabbed into their hearts, and then they’re forced to run on treadmills until they die or that device malfunctions. Despite 34 years of this work and hundreds of dead dogs, there’s been no benefit to patients.”

Last year, WCWP gave The HighWire information about a new bat testing laboratory at Colorado State University involving highly transmissible viruses in gain-of-function research experiments. Goodman explained how bioweapons research is often funded by DARPA and DoD (Department of Defense).

WCWP has been working to reform the system that rubber stamps “cruel” and “barbaric” animal testing with little to no legitimate purpose. Taxpayer dollars are not only funding wasteful animal experiments, but also gain-of-function research. Former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said this research caused the COVID-19 pandemic and the current Highly Pathogenic Avian Flu (HPAI) outbreak that has moved from birds to livestock.