Not many things tug at our heartstrings more than manās best friend.
But sometimes, man doesnāt uphold his end of the friendship bargain. Sometimes, he even chooses to inflict pain.
Youāve heard of campaigns against animal testing and experimentation. Maybe youāve even advocated against these practices at some point ā but youāll be stunned to learn youāve been bankrolling cruel animal experiments all along.
Youād think Dr. Anthony Fauci, Americaās top medical scientist, would share ethical concerns about taxpayer-funded animal cruelty.
But thatās clearly not the case.
According to The Federalist, Fauciās National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases sent part of a $375,800 grant to a lab in Tunisia so scientists could perform ācruel experiments on beagles.ā
The nonpartisan watchdog group the White Coat Waste Project released a shocking report detailing the mistreatment of the beagles abused in the āstudy,ā according to the outlet.
Experimenters drugged the dogs and ā their heads in mesh cages filled with hundreds of infected sand flies.ā
They starved the flies beforehand to make them hungry and isolated the beagles in the cages for nine consecutive nights, āusing them as bait to attract infectious sand flies.ā
In the WCWPās words, the dogs were āeaten alive.ā
To an animal lover (and rational person) like myself, āunbelievableā does not even begin to describe this abuse.
Itās heartbreaking, unethical and sickening.
And to make matters worse, this is being funded with your tax dollars, without your consent.
The experiments in Tunisia arenāt the only beagle āresearchā the NIAID has funded.
The agency also spent a whopping $424,455 to fund experiments at the University of Georgia that infected beagles with parasite-carrying flies.
The dogs reportedly āvocalized in painā during the experiments.
Sadly, they were scheduled to be euthanized in June.
Who could do something like this to innocent dogs? Who could allow this to happen? Anthony Fauci, Americaās Health and wellness czar, apparently.
Better yet, who has the authority to put an end to it?
According to the Post Millennial, 14 Republican representatives wrote a letter in July to National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins ā who oversees the NIAID ā demanding to know why the agency had been using taxpayer funds for such āresearch.ā
The letter reiterated a claim we famously heard during a heated exchange between Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Fauci in July ā that the NIAID had funded āgain of functionā research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab where many people speculate the coronavirus originated.
Americans deserve to know where their money is going. They deserve the chance to say ānoā and demand an end to this despicable experimentation.
I, for one, am determined to defend the defenseless ā animal or human ā and I hope others are committed to doing the same.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
