OPINION | This article contains commentary that reflects the author's opinion.
Correction Notice: The NIH did not fund experiments on beagle puppies in a lab in Tunisia, North Africa. You can read more at PolitiFact.
Dr. Anthony Facui is facing severe backlash over a disturbing report that surfaced over the weekend about the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Fauci is one of the top officials at NIH and he is also the chief medical adviser to Joe Biden. Fauci serves as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of 27 agencies making up the NIH.
In a letter to lawmakers, the NIH admitted that U.S. taxpayers funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) that led to the creation of a more severe strain of bat coronavirus.
Daily Wire notes that “the WIV is one of the chief suspects for the origin of COVID-19.”
Fauci falsely claimed during a May Senate hearing that the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Fauci’s claim undermines and contradicts his past support for EcoHealth and its president, Peter Daszak, which have received U.S. taxpayer-funded grants to perform research at WIV.
Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina called on Fauci to answer for this report about allegations of the NIH funding experiments on dozens of puppies.
More from Daily Wire:
The lawmakers’ letter describes the research as “costly, cruel, and unnecessary.” The letter continues:
According to documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by taxpayer watchdog group White Coat Waste Project, and subsequent media coverage, from October 2018 until February 2019, NIAID spent $1.68 million in taxpayer funds on drug tests involving 44 beagle puppies. The dogs were all between six and eight months old. The commissioned tests involved injecting and force-feeding the puppies an experimental drug for several weeks, before killing and dissecting them.
Of particular concern is the fact that the invoice to NIAID included a line item for “cordectomy.” 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.
