• A new White Coat Waste Project investigation has uncovered NIH-funded experiments where dozens of cats have their spines severed, vertebrae removed and electrodes implanted into their spines. 
• The cats have water and balloons forced down their throats to force them to swallow on demand.  They are then killed and dissected. 
• Records show that friendly, playful, and purring cats were tormented and killed by this lab’s white coats with our tax dollars. 
• The current NIH grant funding this cat experiment received $336,875 just this year and nearly $1.7 million since it started in 2018.  It expires next week and we’re trying to stop it. 

White Coat Waste (WCW) is a Project to get the U.S. government out of the cat testing business. Most recently, we exposed how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal agencies have been wasting your money to fund a lab that intentionally breeds sick kittens for use in cruel taxpayer-funded experiments. Our investigation helped prompt the introduction of a bipartisan amendment to cut funding for the NIH’s painful cat testing.

Now, we’ve uncovered how the NIH has shipped millions to the notorious University of Louisville (UL)—where we ended cruel taxpayer-funded treadmill experiments on cats last year—for sickening and unnecessary tests to study how cats swallow after their spines are intentionally severed.

In UL’s NIH-funded experiments, dozens of cats have their spines severed, vertebrae removed and electrodes implanted into their spines. The cats have water and balloons forced down their throats to force the cats to swallow on demand. All cats are killed at the end of the experiments.

Not satisfied by wasting tax dollars to just torture cats, UL’s white coats conducted the exact same experiment in rats concurrently. 

Records obtained by WCW through open records requests show that friendly, playful, and purring cats were tormented and killed by callous and greedy UL white coats with our tax dollars. 

One small female cat, identified only as #M209882, was just over a year old when UL white coats killed her. One note in her records says, “She was purring so loudly. I couldn’t hear anything.”  

Another orange-blotched tabby cat named Torti (ID# M209629) was also killed by UL white coats right after her first birthday.  Heartless experimenters noted that she was “playful and purring” just four days before they killed her.

Documents show that some cats were confined and experimented on at UL for nearly 1,000 days before being killed.  

The current NIH grant funding UL’s cat experiments received $336,875 just this year and nearly $1.7 million since it started in 2018. This grant is slated to expire next week and we’re urging the NIH not to renew it! 

Other NIH grants that have funded these same experiments have raked in over $25 million in taxpayers’ money.

Is this how you want your money spent?