LAWSUIT: WCW Sues NIH For Records on Pet and Primate Abuse in Labs

Posted by Amanda Nieves
29 January 2024 | Blog

 

  • White Coat Waste Project (WCW) has filed a new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for failing to turn over documents following 15 different FOIA requests for animal testing records.
  • The disputed records relate to NIH funding for cruel experiments on dogs, cats and primates in the U.S. and foreign countries.
  • WCW is suing for access to animal experimentation applications, animal purchase records, violation reports, emails, videos, and photos.
  • In some of the cases, WCW has been waiting years for the NIH to hand over documents.

Last week, White Coat Waste Project united 23 Democrats and Republicans in Congress to demand answers from the National Institutes of Health about its wasteful spending on experiments on dogs and cats and efforts to end this cruel testing and retire the survivors. Citing numerous WCW investigations, the lawmakers wrote: “we are alarmed by the pain and suffering being inflicted on dogs and cats in NIH-funded labs with taxpayer dollars.

As Congress works to hold NIH accountable, WCW is forging forward with our investigations into the NIH’s secretive and wasteful spending for experiments on dogs, cats and primates at home and abroad.

Today, we filed a new lawsuit in federal court over 15 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that the NIH has failed to fulfill. In some of the cases, we’ve been waiting for the NIH to hand over documents since 2022.

WCW Sues NIH For Records

Among other records, we’re fighting for access to animal experimentation applications, animal purchase records, animal welfare violation reports, meeting minutes, emails, videos, and photos related to ongoing WCW campaigns to shut down NIH-funded testing on dogs, cats and primates, including:

  • NIH’s in-house septic shock experiments that force pneumonia bacteria into beagle puppies’ lungs and bleed them out
  • Foreign dog experiments, including locking beagle puppies in cages and infesting them with biting sand flies in a lab in Tunisia
  • NIH-funded experiments on cats
  • A NIH-funded University of Pennsylvania lab that breeds sick and deformed terriers, beagles, and other hounds to kill in experiments
  • A NIH-funded lab that rounds up abandoned pet hounds, locks them in mesh cages, and straps capsules full of hungry sand flies to the dogs’ ears so the insects can “feed” on the dogs
  • NIH’s primate breeding programs and in-house monkey experiments, including its Fear Factory lab that destroys monkeys’ brains with acid, chains them up small cages and scares them with toy snakes and spiders
  • Retirement records for lab survivors adopted out under an NIH policy secured by WCW
WCW Sues NIH For Records

Images from a NIH-funded dog lab in Tunisia exposed by WCW where beagles were caged and fed to hungry sand flies.

Last month, we filed another FOIA lawsuit against the NIH for records related to EcoHealth Alliance, the Wuhan animal lab, gain-of-function experiments, and animal testing at the NIH’s Rocky Mountain Lab and other taxpayer-funded virus labs.

Taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent!

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