Despite Promises, Feds Still Funding “Sick” and “Unnecessary” Beagle Testing
Originally published by Washington City Paper

A recent national poll found that a staggering 85 percent of Americans across the political spectrum—Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike—oppose taxpayer funding for cruel experiments on dogs and cats.

To their credit, the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs have heard the public loud and clear and swiftly slashed and banned spending on wasteful and inhumane testing on dogs and cats exposed by White Coat Waste. 

But the nation’s top animal testing funder, the Bethesda-based National Institutes of Health (NIH), is still in the doghouse.

NIH’s Beaglegate Continues

In a July podcast responding to criticism from White Coat Waste and Congress, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and Acting Deputy Director Nicole Kleinstreuer claimed they’re “working tirelessly” to “phase out” cruel experiments on dogs and cats and that the problem “predates” them.

Unfortunately, their rhetoric doesn’t match reality.

A new White Coat Waste investigation has exposed how since Bhattacharya and Kleinstreuer took office in April, the NIH has handed out at least 22 brand-new grants—totaling $24 million—to pharmaceutical companies specifically to test their experimental drugs on dogs. The NIH also extended $72 million worth of pre-existing grants and contracts funding dog tests by drug firms in the U.S. and foreign countries.

In these barbaric NIH-funded tests, beagles are dosed with experimental drugs through masks strapped to their faces, tubes forced down their throats, or injections in their veins or eyeballs. Beagles are the victims of choice because, as one recent NIH-funded contract obtained by White Coat Waste stated: “Beagle dog is docile, cute, and easy to domesticate, so it has been the best choice.”

The dogs in these tests are dosed with drugs every day for months on end. The animals often suffer from pain, paralysis, convulsions, bleeding, vomiting, and even death. Dogs who don’t die during the testing are often killed and dissected.

In the past, White Coat Waste has documented how beagles as young as one week old are abused in these drug tests, and how some have had their vocal cords cut to silence them and their mouths taped shut so they can’t spit out the drugs. One of the recently renewed NIH drug testing contracts is paying millions to strap puppies in vests that infuse cocaine directly into their veins.

Is this how you want your money spent?

Public Health Leaders and Industry Condemn Dog Testing

Public health and industry leaders agree: the NIH’s dog testing obsession is indefensible.

The NIH’s wasteful spending on pharma’s beagle abuse continues even though the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stated in response to a 2021 White Coat Waste investigation, “The FDA does not mandate that human drugs be studied in dogs.”

Current FDA Commissioner Marty Makary has also long supported White Coat Waste’s work to end the NIH’s wasteful and cruel drug testing on dogs. He’s called the experiments “sick” and “outdated, unnecessary, and cruel.”

More recently, Commissioner Makary said, “Why are we testing every single drug on chimpanzees and dogs, usually beagles? Because they’re obedient…It’s sad and it’s unnecessary.” 

Even Makary and Bhattacharya’s boss, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has backed White Coat Waste’s efforts to end NIH-funded dog experiments, calling them “atrocious.”

The drug industry is also pushing back on this government-subsidized canine cruelty. WCW has been working with the forward-thinking Washington, DC-based Vanda Pharmaceuticals that has long criticized dog testing for human drugs as useless red tape. In recent X posts, Vanda has written that, “drug experiments on beagles not only cannot inform reactions in humans but cannot even predict the effect of drugs in other dogs” and condemned the tests as “brutal” and “barbaric.”

Combatting the NIH’s Canine Cruelty 

At an April 2025 Cabinet meeting, RFK, Jr. promised a “dramatic reduction in animal testing at the NIH and FDA.” 

Instead, the problem at NIH has gotten worse.

Fortunately, White Coat Waste has rallied over 250,000 of its supporters to contact the NIH, and united lawmakers to introduce bipartisan legislation supported by Rep. Holmes Norton and others to defund the defiant agency’s dog testing.

The cure for the government’s animal testing addiction is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness!