Dr. Anthony Fauci writes in a new book that public backlash he faced over funding painful experiments on beagle puppies was “lies” and “lunacy” from the “far-right” — despite acknowledging in recent congressional testimony that he “signed off” on the “peer-reviewed” research.
In “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service,” the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director never admits to approving a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for a lab in Tunisia and dismisses it as a right-wing fever dream that fueled attacks from Republicans against him in fall 2021.
“You really cannot make this stuff up! Though, of course, they did,” Fauci writes of the $375,000 grant that forced the snouts of sedated pooches into mesh cages to be feasted on by sand flies that had been food-deprived for 24 hours.
“These off-the-wall accusations were particularly bothersome to me for two reasons,” he adds. “NIH-funded research that involves animals is conducted under strict guidelines for the use and care of laboratory animals, and I am a passionate animal lover, especially of dogs.”
The beagles were later euthanized, according to internal NIAID grant documents later obtained by the taxpayer watchdog group White Coat Waste Project.
Fauci goes on in the book to decry the media frenzy around the research — which came from both sides of the political divide — as “lunacy” but recalls taking consolation in an unexpected phone call from “a familiar and welcome” public figure: Barack Obama.
“The former president asked me how I was holding up under this onslaught of lies,” the doc writes.
In a public hearing before a House committee earlier this month, however, Fauci was asked directly about the research by Staten Island GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis — and acknowledged that he approved it.
“I signed off on them because they were approved by a peer review,” Fauci told members of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
The experiments were first reported by White Coat Waste Project, which was founded by former Republican strategist Anthony Bellotti in 2013 and advocates for the elimination of federally funded animal research.
“Beaglegate is Fauci’s Achilles’ heel, which is why in his new book he’s still frantically fibbing about it even though White Coat Waste Project has receipts for his bankrolling of beagle torture in Tunisia,” Bellotti told The Post, pointing to a trove of internal NIAID documents confirming the research.
The Washington Post fact-checked the matter after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) lambasted Fauci in the same hearing by holding up a picture of the beagles taken while they were under experimentation.
In its report, the outlet noted that NIAID removed the project from its grant database without explanation following press inquiries in late 2021 — and that an editor of a journal that published the research admitted in back-channel communications to a conflict of interest after trying to edit out information about the agency’s funding.
“Moreover, the NIH study in Tunisia that the agency said it funded was cast in a positive light that is undermined by the grant application that has since been made public,” wrote Washington Post “chief fact-checker” Glenn Kessler.
“The Washington Post admitted we were right and that Fauci funded it and NIH then fabricated and fed the paper disinformation about dog testing to defend ‘America’s Doctor’ and discredit us,” Bellotti said.
Nor were Republicans and GOP-linked groups the only ones to decry the beagle testing.
In October 2021, the left-wing group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) issued a statement saying, “NIH’s denial that Fauci’s agency funded the beagle atrocity is a little too convenient.”
“Is rewriting history the new defense against complicity in torture?” asked PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo, who pointed to a similar experiment on monkeys that the NIH had dismissed as a mistake.
