• Less than 24 hours after a new White Coat Waste (WCW) investigation exposed how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is still funding disturbing experiments where parts of aborted human fetuses are implanted into lab animals, the agency has stated it will not renew the grants.
• WCW identified 17 active NIH-funded human fetal tissue grants to labs in the U.S. and abroad, 16 of which funded nightmarish animal experiments.
• The active NIH grants raked in $21,755,292 from taxpayers in 2024, and many were approved by Dr. Fauci and were being funded through 2026.
• The House committee that controls the NIH budget just voted to defund these experiments in the agency’s 2026 spending bill.
• Since 2019, WCW has uncovered NIH-funded experiments that implanted scalps, fingers, skin, organs, and other body parts from aborted human fetuses into lab animals.
• The first Trump administration banned funding for these experiments in 2019. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya promised to reinstate Trump’s NIH funding ban, but hadn’t yet taken action prior to this new investigation.

UPDATE (9/10/25): Less than a day after White Coat Waste’s new investigation exposing active NIH funding for wasteful animal experiments using human fetal tissue, the NIH has responded and confirmed, “The referenced grants, initiated under the Biden administration, will not be renewed.”

ORIGINAL POST

As first reported by Breitbart, a new White Coat Waste investigation has exposed how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is still funding disturbing experiments where parts of aborted human fetuses are implanted into lab animals.

Since 2019, White Coat Waste has been leading a campaign that’s united coalition partners and Congress to expose and end taxpayer funding for grotesque experiments in which parts of aborted human fetuses are implanted into lab animals.

WCW exposed how NIH-funded experimenters implanted fingers from 18-week-old human fetuses into the backs of 5-day-old mice. Four weeks after implantation, the taxpayer-funded lab broke the fingers and left them, fractured, on the baby mice for another two weeks.

WCW’s investigation found that 89% of all of the human fetal tissue experiments funded by the National Institutes of Health involved animal testing, and that Dr. Fauci’s division paid for most of it. 

The first Trump Administration banned new funding for fetal tissue experiments and ended all in-house NIH testing using aborted fetus parts, many involving abusing animals.  WCW’s review has found that Trump’s funding restrictions led to a more than 50% cut in NIH spending on fetal tissue experiments, from $109 million in 2019 to $53 million in 2024. The move would have cut even more if the Biden Administration didn’t reverse the ban in 2021 at the urging of mad scientists and universities. 

Hawley: Will you reinstate President Trump’s policy that no federal research and no federal tax dollars is conducted on fetal tissue taken from elective abortions?

RFK JR: Yes pic.twitter.com/ru2cLim1Os

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 30, 2025

In January 2025, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. promised during his Senate confirmation hearings that the administration wouldn’t fund fetal tissue experiments. He previously criticized Fauci-funded animal tests with fetal tissue as “sadistic.”

In March 2025, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya also pledged to cut the funding.

NEW – Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Says He Would Prohibit the Use of Aborted Fetal Tissue in NIH Funded Research

“We need to make sure the products of science are ethically acceptable to everybody. Having alternatives that are not ethically conflicted … is not just an ethical issue,… pic.twitter.com/28yymS0D77

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) March 5, 2025

In February of this year, WCW delivered explosive testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability about Dr. Fauci and the NIH’s continued funding for animal experiments with human fetal tissue, as well as other NIH-funded abuses like transgender animal experiments.

BOEBERT: “Implant aborted baby parts into lab animals? Have you heard of that sort of research?”

GOODMAN: “Yeah. We did an analysis a few years ago showing that over 90% of experiments using human fetal tissue and putting them in animals were funded by Fauci’s NIAID.”

????… pic.twitter.com/99vJOvCnqE

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) February 10, 2025

RFK Jr.’s agency—which encompasses NIH—hasn’t re-issued this policy yet.  

Now, our updated analysis has found 17 NIH-funded projects coded as “human fetal tissue”  that received a total of $21,755,292 in 2024 are still active. The budgets for some are scheduled to run until at least June 2026 and could be renewed and re-funded.

Sixteen of the 17 grants identified by WCW funded cruel animal experiments. Many of these active NIH-funded human fetal tissue grants have recently paid for experiments that create so-called “BLT mice”—animals implanted with pieces of bone marrow, liver, and thymus from aborted human fetuses.

NIH-funded experimenters implanted pieces of human fetal lungs and thymus glands into mice.

Previously, WCW exposed how NIH-funded experimenters at colleges and other labs implanted the reproductive tracts from human fetuses—including from a pair of aborted twins—into mice dosed with synthetic estrogen. In another, experimenters transplanted human fetal intestines onto the outside of mice’s bodies.

WCW exposed an NIH-funded experiment that implanted human fetal intestines onto the intestines of live mice.

Another NIH-funded lab harvested scalps from aborted human fetuses and transplanted them onto mice and rats. The experimenters then watched human hair grow on the animals, and took pictures. 

An NIH-funded lab harvested scalps from aborted human fetuses and transplanted them onto mice and rats.

WCW exposed how NIH-funded experimenters implanted tiny fingers from 18-week-old human fetuses into the backs of 5-day-old mice. Four weeks after implantation, the taxpayer-funded lab broke the fingers and left them, fractured, on the baby mice for another two weeks.

WCW also documented how an NIH-funded lab extracted testicle cells from monkeys and aborted human fetuses, then implanted the cells into irradiated “nude mice” who’d been specially bred to have compromised immune systems. 

WCW’s investigation uncovered how NIH-funded experimenters implanted pieces of human fetuses’ brains into baby mice.

Is this how you want your money spent? Defunding these disturbing animal experiments is one of WCW’s top priorities for the Trump administration.  And it should be low-hanging fruit since they’ve done it before.   

While the NIH hasn’t yet canceled these grants despite promises to do so, the U.S. House of Representatives committee that controls the NIH budget just voted to defund these experiments in the agency’s 2026 spending bill.

The solution is simple: