Taxpayers, Beware: Fauci Confesses Spending Your Money Without Checking
Update (June 3, 2024): Anthony Fauci, a former director at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has admitted in just-released closed-door congressional testimony that he doled out your tax dollars by the millions to foreign laboratories he knew nothing about.
Fauci, former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (which is part of NIH), is now the third former or current high-ranking NIH official who has admitted to total financial irresponsibility in throwing taxpayer dollars at laboratories in foreign countries without even knowing what the experiments involved or what standards the labs are—or aren’t—held to.
The list also includes NIH’s former director Francis Collins and current deputy director, Lawrence Tabak. (Read about their equally appalling testimony below.)
Here’s part of Fauci’s testimony about grants sent to foreign labs:
Majority Counsel: “Who gives the final approval?”
Dr. Fauci: “You know, technically, I sign off on each council, but I don’t see the grants and what they are. I never look at what grants are there. It’s just somebody at the end of the council where they’re all finished and they go, ‘Here,’ and you sign it.”
Majority Counsel: “Okay. So to your knowledge, [your agency] wouldn’t kind of independently verify the biosafety of a foreign lab?”
Dr. Fauci: “Again, I’d have to say I’m not sure. To my knowledge, I wouldn’t be able to make a statement that I would be confident it would be.”
Then, after Fauci told the committee he knew of absolutely no national biosecurity review of the laboratories he sent taxpayer money to, there was this exchange:
Majority Counsel: “I guess what we’re trying to learn going forward is, obviously, U.S. labs are vetted, certified, and there’s a standard of how U.S. labs operate. Are foreign labs held to the same standard as U.S. labs when they receive U.S. money, or are they the standards of the country in which they operate?”
Dr. Fauci: “I am not certain. I have heard again, I think it was subsequent to of course, that was never brought up.”
Majority Counsel: “Uh huh.”
Dr. Fauci: “When I was the director, no one ever asked me, you know, who determines, you know, what the standards of a foreign lab are. But so the answer to your question is I don’t know, okay?” [Emphasis added.]
This is how your tax money—up to $300 million a year—gets flung at laboratories in other countries that can do whatever they like with it. Because NO ONE is checking on them.
Help put a stop to this boondoggle.
Please TAKE ACTION by urging your U.S. representative to support the Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas (CARGO) ACT, which would ban NIH from funding experiments on animals in foreign laboratories:
Is anyone minding the store at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)? According to testimony from its most recent former director, Francis Collins, the answer is a big fat NO.
Collins testified before a congressional subcommittee that he has no idea how, or even if, foreign laboratories seeking U.S. money to fund animal experiments are vetted by anyone at NIH—or any other government entity—before the agency sends them fistfuls of taxpayer dollars—up to $300 million each year.
In other words, the government has admitted what PETA has been saying ever since we uncovered an NIH-funded South American “laboratory” where monkeys were kept outdoors in filthy cages under a tarp while the directors committed fraud for financial gain, bilking the agency out of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
The transcript of Collins’ testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, was recently published, and you can read the incriminating bits between lines 877 and 927. Here’s an excerpt:
Q: Again, what we’re trying to figure out is if, like, you get a proposal that has a foreign lab on it, if NIH would do all the work themselves, or if they would call the State Department, or if they would call some other department to try to determine if that foreign lab is reputable.
Collins: I don’t know.
Stunning ignorance from a man who was at the helm of a government agency for 12 years with a $49 billion annual budget.
Testimony from Lawrence Tabak, NIH’s deputy director, was no better. The takeaway? The agency continues to spend taxpayers’ money irresponsibly.
U.S. taxpayers, animals subjected to abuse and exploitation, and the integrity of medical research demand swift action to rectify these systemic failures.
That’s why Congress must take immediate action to end such waste by passing the Cease Animal Research Grants Overseas (CARGO) Act, introduced by Reps. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) and Troy Nehls (R-Texas). This commonsense, bipartisan legislation is crucial to halting the waste of taxpayer money, preventing cruelty to animals, and promoting ethical research practices.
What You Can Do
If you’re a U.S. resident, please urge your U.S. representative to support the CARGO Act today:
And everyone can help end NIH’s funding of cruel and useless sepsis experiments on mice:
