On Thursday, February 6, 2025, the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation hosted a hearing with a title as jarring as its subject: “Transgender Lab Rats and Poisoned Puppies: Oversight on Taxpayer Funded Animal Cruelty.” 

The stated purpose? To expose “wasteful and cruel research conducted on animals and paid for by taxpayer dollars”. 

And expose it they did. 

Committee Chair Nancy Mace and expert witnesses highlighted examples of the “sick and cruel and barbaric” — “the savage to the stupid” — things being done to nonhuman animals in government-funded labs:

•   Monkeys blasted with hormones to see if “gender-affirming” therapies increase susceptibility to HIV, a human-specific virus that Chair Mace correctly noted monkeys “cannot have”.

•   Kittens force-fed dead cats bought from Chinese wet markets in cannibalism experiments – by a USDA researcher inducted into the USDA’s “Hall of Fame”, no less.

•   Monkeys, mice, and rats subjected to genital mutilation and the monitoring of their genitals’ size and shape while receiving “hormones used for human gender transitions”.

•   Cats with “marbles shoved up their rectums” and “electroshocked to make them defecate in constipation experiments”.

•   Puppies injected with cocaine.

•   Rats dosed with testosterone to “mimic” human gender transitions and, then, subjected to overdose tests with recreational “date rape” drugs.

•   Hamsters forced into staged fight clubs.

•   Dogs enduring “multiple major surgeries”, having devices “stabbed into their hearts”, and, then, being “forced to run on treadmills until they die or that device malfunctions”. (Per the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, this experiment has been going on for 34 years, torturing and killing hundreds of dogs, without any benefit to humans.)

•   Animals implanted with human tissue from aborted fetuses.

•   Dead turtles put on treadmills.

As horrifying as these examples are, they represent only the tiniest fraction of the $20+ BILLION federal dollars funneled into animal experimentation each year.

And, this is nothing new. For decades, researchers have been paid with tax dollars to conduct “acts that would ‘shock the conscience’ of most Americans”. 

Indeed, the U.S. government is the largest funder of animal research both domestically and abroad, and it outspends the private sector by an estimated 2:1. Indeed, the White Coat Waste Project estimates that, since 1998, the NIH alone has dumped about half a TRILLION dollars into animal research. 

Yet, what we know about this perverse enterprise is only the very tip of the iceberg because, not only do federal agencies’ spending databases obfuscate transparency “by design”, but these agencies are not required “to report or even track in some cases how much money is being spent, how many animals are being used, what’s being done to them, where, and what taxpayers are getting out of it”.

And, they want to keep it this way. Federal agencies fight tooth and nail to keep the details of their animal research hidden — so much so that even Congress doesn’t have and struggles to get answers.

This isn’t science. Instead, as stated at the February 6, 2025 hearing,:

This is “big business”.

This is “a boondoggle”.

This is a “racket”.

This is “embarrassing”. 

This is “insane”. 

This is “proof that evil exists”.

But, thankfully, the political tide may be turning, and we cannot let this moment slip away.

Help expose the government’s multibillion-dollar animal-torture-for-profit machine by spreading the word. Then, if you haven’t already, call on lawmakers to pass the FDA Modernization Act 3.0.

Take Action Now

Help spread the truth about the taxpayer-funded exploitation and abuse of animals in labs. Share this page on Facebook, X, or Bluesky now.