• A new White Coat Waste investigation exposes a brutal betrayal: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) extended lethal heart failure experiments on kittens—within days of claiming it was “working tirelessly” to phase out dog and cat testing.
• Exclusive documents obtained by WCW through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal that an NIH-funded lab at Temple University plans to cut open the chests of kittens and implant bands around their aortas—deliberately inducing heart failure. 
• The NIH-approved protocol calls for 25 kittens—just 8 to 10 weeks old—to be abused for months, then killed by cutting out their hearts while they’re still alive. 
• NIH quietly extended this project for another year, despite its scheduled end date of July 31, 2025. It has already burned through $4.1 million in taxpayer money.  
• WCW also exposed how the Trump NIH, under Director Jay Bhattacharya, is reviving painful Fauci-era pet experiments—including lethal kitten testing—and even funding brand-new beagle labs. 
• While agencies like the Pentagon are banning dog and cat labs following WCW exposés, Nicole Kleinstreuer—NIH’s new “animal testing czar”—is doubling down. She refuses to cut existing grants and contracts—or prohibit future funding. 
• While legacy animal rights groups applauded Bhattacharya and Kleinstreuer, WCW blew the whistle. This investigation is 100% WCW—first, public, and exclusive.

After an exclusive WCW investigation exposed $57 million in Army-funded dog and cat experiments, President Trump’s Defense Department (DOD) cut millions in contracts all around the world. Secretary Hegseth credited WCW for bringing them to light.

Weeks prior, the DOD canceled a $10 million Navy contract for cruel cat constipation experiments unearthed by WCW and the Navy banned all testing on dogs and cats—crediting WCW for the historic decision. 

But over at the NIH, it’s a different story.  

WCW has exposed how Trump’s NIH, under Director Jay Bhattacharya and Deputy Director Nicole Kleinstreuer, has defiantly doubled down on animal testing and recently wasted taxpayer dollars renewing Fauci-era dog and cat labs—and launching brand-new beagle experiments. 

A previous WCW investigation unearthed this REAL photo from inside a lab that wastes NIH grant funding to sew kittens’ eyes shut and cause vision disorders.  Jay Bhattacharya’s NIH just renewed this project.

Case in point: 

A new WCW investigation has uncovered how NIH quietly extended lethal kitten experiments just days after Bhattacharya and Kleinstreuer claimed they were “working tirelessly” to phase out pet experiments in response to pressure from WCW.

Documents obtained by WCW through FOIA detail how NIH-funded experimenters at Temple University—in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania—plan to abuse 8-to-10-week-old kittens, cut open their chests, pry apart their tiny ribs, and surgically implant bands around their aortas to deliberately restrict blood flow and induce heart failure.

The grant records secured by WCW show that the project calls for 25 kittens to be killed after periods of two months and four months of experimentation. The laboratory states that they will kill the kittens by cardiectomy—i.e., cutting out their hearts while they’re still alive.  

This wasteful and abusive taxpayer-funded lab was scheduled to end on July 31, 2025. Instead of canceling it and possibly still sparing the kittens, Bhattacharya’s NIH decided to extend the project for another year—ensuring twenty-five corpses. 

The grant, which started in 2016, has cost taxpayers $4.1 million to date.  

Temple has been draining NIH dollars for similar cat and kitten experiments since 1984—wasting more than $39 million of taxpayers’ money. 

This isn’t an isolated incident. 

WCW’s ongoing investigations and lawsuits are exposing how the NIH continues to renew and start up funding for cruel experiments on cats and dogs at home and abroad, including:

• Infecting cats with COVID and then killing them  
• Sewing kittens’ eyes shut to cause vision disorders 
• Breeding kittens to suffer from debilitating genetic disorders that cause loss of muscle control, difficulty walking, vision loss, tremors, and early death  
• Cutting out cats’ eyes and electroshocking them 

Recently, following relentless pressure from WCW—including a WCW-organized letter from Congress—Bhattacharya and Kleinstreuer finally said they will phase out testing on dogs and cats after defiantly defending animal labs and refusing to take action for months.

In a series of lethal tests exposed by a WCW investigation, NIH-funded experimenters in the U.S. and Russia sawed off the legs of healthy cats and replaced them with experimental prosthetic limbs anchored to the bone.

But, despite its recent promise to “phase out” dog and cat labs, the NIH hasn’t actually announced details of this effort. 

No cuts. No bans. No benchmarks. No deadlines. Just talk.

Instead of accepting responsibility and taking immediate action, Bhattacharya and Kleinstreuer are passing the buck—and blaming others while 25 kittens die. They claim NIH’s active funding for dog and cat testing “predates them,” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

Cutting NIH’s dog and cat testing has been WCW’s #1 priority for Congress and the new Trump Administration. Now, it’s time to finish the job: