A government research laboratory known for its involvement in conducting “cruel” and lethal drug tests on beagles for over forty years has been closed, as announced by National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya.
The NIH’s contentious in-house Clinical Center located on its Bethesda, Maryland campus had faced allegations of subjecting 2,000 beagles to pneumonia-inducing bacteria among other harsh experiments.
The closure of the notorious facility dovetails with a broader push by the Trump administration to phase out animal testing.
“We have implemented a policy to replace the use of animals in research with advanced technologies, such as AI and other tools that offer more accurate insights into human health,” Bhattacharya shared on “Fox & Friends Weekend” Saturday.
“We got rid of all of the beagle experiments on NIH campus.”
Beagle experimentation at the NIH lab had been a deeply controversial practice, drawing outrage from multiple members of Congress and scrutiny from the White Coat Waste Project watchdog group, which fights against animal experimentation.
WCW had uncovered federal experiments in which scientists cut into beagles to finagle tubing into their lungs so that they could pump deadly pneumonia-causing bacteria in there and conduct experiments related to septic shock as well as organ failure.
After about four days, any surviving dog would be put down and then stashed inside a refrigerator.
At least 2,133 died during this process, and the government was estimated to have forked over between $1,000 and $1,500 per beagle from Envigo’s puppy mill in Cumberland, Va.
“As the watchdog that first uncovered and battled Dr. Fauci’s beagle tests (the biggest animal testing scandal in history), we’re proud that White Coat Waste has closed the NIH’s last in-house beagle laboratory following a hard-fought nine-year-long campaign,” WCW founder and President Anthony Bellotti, a former Republican strategist, said in a statement.
“We applaud the President for cutting this wasteful NIH spending and will keep fighting until we defund all dog labs at home and abroad. The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness!”
Dr. Anthony Fauci became engulfed in a public relations firestorm during the COVID-19 pandemic following revelations that he had signed off on the beagle experiments.
Fauci later said that “I signed off on them because they were approved by a peer review.” His allies argued that he was so far up the chain of command that it was unfair to blame him for what critics have described as taxpayer-funded torture of dogs in labs.
A slew of Republican lawmakers later pummeled Fauci over the ordeal, which has since been dubbed Beaglegate.
A bipartisan group of nearly two dozen lawmakers penned a letter to Fauci at the time complaining about the experiments.
Now that the facility’s closure has been announced, several GOP lawmakers have since praised Bhattacharya for ending the controversial practice.
“Having led years of efforts to end the NIH’s cruel and unnecessary experiments on dogs and cats, I applaud President Trump’s NIH for finally cutting the agency’s horrific in-house septic shock tests on beagles,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) said in a statement.
“I hope this is only the beginning of NIH’s efforts to eliminate funding for inhumane and outdated animal experiments.”
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) called it a “horrific practice” and said that “testing on any dog, of any breed, for any reason, must be outlawed.”
Last month, before Bhattacharya’s announcement, the NIH confirmed to Congress that experiments on dogs in that laboratory were still ongoing and appeared to push for additional funding for it, albeit significantly less than in the past.
Tech baron Elon Musk said last week that he planned to investigate it, likely meaning that his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team would probe the matter.
Other agencies in the Trump administration are taking steps to phase out animal testing as well.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revealed last month that it will work to phase out such experimentation on animals for antibody therapies in favor of other options that can mirror human organs.
The Environmental Protection Agency is also moving to reinstate a phase-out of animal testing that the first Trump administration pursued.
