Despite acknowledging “peer-reviewed” studies in his recent congressional testimony, Dr Anthony Fauci has written a new book calling the public backlash he received over funding painful experiments on beagle puppies a “lie” and “madness” perpetrated by the “far right”.
In “On Call: A Physician’s Journey as a Public Servant,” the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) never acknowledged approving the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant for the Tunisian lab, dismissing it as a right-wing fever dream that fueled Republican attacks against him in the fall of 2021.
“You can’t really make this up! Of course they did,” Fauci wrote about a $375,000 grant that involved sedated dogs’ noses being placed in mesh cages and fed sandflies that had been deprived of food for 24 hours.
“These outlandish accusations were particularly troubling to me for two reasons,” he added: “NIH-funded research involving animals is conducted under strict guidelines for the use and care of laboratory animals, and I am a lover of animals, especially dogs.”
The beagle was later euthanized. Internal NIAID Grant Documents It was later obtained by taxpayer watchdog group Whitecoat Waste Project.
In his book, Dr Fauci denounces the media frenzy around the study from both sides of the political divide as “madness,” but recalls taking solace in an unexpected phone call from a “familiar and welcoming” public figure, Barack Obama.
“The former president asked me how I was withstanding this onslaught of lies,” the documentary reads.
But during a House committee hearing earlier this month, Fauci was asked directly about the study by Staten Island Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, and he acknowledged that he had approved it.
“It was peer-reviewed and I approved it,” Fauci said. Said Members of the House Select Subcommittee on COVID-19.
The experiment First reported Founded in 2013 by former Republican strategist Anthony Bellotti, the Whitecoat Waste Project advocates for an end to federally funded animal testing.
“Beaglegate is Fauci’s Achilles heel, which is why he is so desperate to lie about it in his new book, even though he has receipts from the White Coat Waste Project, which funded the torture of beagles in Tunisia,” Bellotti told the Post. A trove of internal NIAID documents Check the research.
The Washington Post Fact-checked This came after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) blasted Dr. Fauci at the same hearing, holding up a photo of a beagle undergoing testing.
Following media inquiries in late 2021, the media outlet reported that NIAID removed the project from its grants database without explanation. It also said that the editor of the journal that published the study had Backchannel Communication He found himself in a conflict of interest after trying to remove information about the agency’s funding.
“Furthermore, the purported NIH-funded study in Tunisia was well received, but that impression was tarnished by grant applications that were subsequently made public,” wrote Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post’s “chief fact-checker.”
“The Washington Post admitted that we were right, that Dr. Fauci funded and then NIH fabricated false information about dog experiments and fed it to the paper, defending ‘America’s Doctor,’ and discrediting us,” Bellotti said.
Republicans and GOP-affiliated groups were not the only ones to condemn the beagle experiment.
In October 2021, the left-wing group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) issued a statement saying, “It’s a little too convenient for the NIH to deny that Fauci’s institution funded the beagle tragedy.”
“Is rewriting history the new defense for complicity in torture?” asked PETA senior vice president Cathy Guillermo, pointing to similar experiments on monkeys that the NIH has dismissed as wrong.
