Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been driving viral discussions about wasteful federal spending the incoming Trump Administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plans to tackle. Some of the most popular DOGE posts feature stupid and cruel experiments on dogs and cats we've been fighting to defund for years. DOGE can save billions by cracking down on this widely opposed government waste that hurts pets and taxpayers.
Musk and Ramaswamy recently criticized the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for shipping $770,000 to a Kremlin-tied cat testing laboratory in Russia. In these experiments that we first exposed in 2022, dozens of healthy cats had their brains damaged, electrodes implanted into their spines, and the zombified felines were forced to walk on treadmills before being killed. Fortunately, following our efforts, this project was halted last year.
NIH's foreign spending spree on pet abuse doesn't end there. A recent investigation by the White Coat Waste Project (WCW) exposed how the NIH is currently paying a lab in China over $2 million for completely unnecessary and wasteful drug tests on beagles and other animals. In these tests criticized by Congressional Republicans and Democrats, Donald Trump, Jr. and many others, dogs are typically force-fed increasingly large doses of experimental compounds until they convulse, vomit, bleed or die.
In all, despite what happened in Wuhan and China's threats to our national security, NIH still authorizes 27 animal labs in China to receive taxpayers' money, including labs run by or linked to the Chinese Communist Party and Peoples Liberation Army. Now that's some reckless government spending that needs to end.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Here in the U.S., the NIH is wasting millions to inject puppies with cocaine, infect cats with COVID, spin cats to make them nauseous for motion sickness tests, and even cut off cats' legs. Many painful experiments on pets first approved and funded by Anthony Fauci are still underway, too.
Is this how you want your money spent?
But it's not just the NIH. Right now, we're also working to end wasteful experiments on pets funded by the Department of Defense (DOD), which just failed a financial audit for the seventh year in a row. Its unchecked spending on animal tests shouldn't surprise anyone.
We recently collaborated to uncover how the U.S. Army commissioned a $949,108 experiment in which 40 beagles were forced to ingest an experimental drug and then killed for the alleged purpose of winning FDA approval. The DOD wasted tax dollars on the dog tests even though the FDA has stated that it doesn't require them.
We've also unearthed how the DOD's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has wasted over $10 million on active experiments in which cats are maimed and electro-shocked for erectile dysfunction and constipation studies.
Dr. Gerald Parker, a member of the DOD's Defense Science Board and chair of the NIH's biosecurity committee, commented that, “After spending most of my career in the Army as a military officer and DOD as a senior executive until 2013, I am disturbed to learn that unethical studies using companion animals and with no link to improving operational military medicine were recently funded by DOD and military service funding agencies. This must stop.”
Even DARPA, which funded the cat constipation tests, admits that, “animal models have limited relevance to humans and poorly predict effects in humans.”
Yet billions in stupid spending on animal tests persists—but hopefully not for long. National polling conducted last month found that 85 percent of Americans oppose taxpayer-funded dog and cat experiments. Additionally, President-elect Donald Trump's nominees to head health agencies, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Marty Makary and Dr. Jay Battacharya, have all criticized dog testing funded by Fauci and other bureaucrats.
Cutting wasteful government spending that tortures pets is a no-brainer for DOGE to add at the top of its list of programs to put on the chopping block.
Congressman Greg Steube represents Florida's 17th Congressional District. Justin Goodman is the senior vice president at the government watchdog White Coat Waste Project.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
