National Institutes of Health injected beagle puppies with cocaine

The ‘coke hounds’ were fitted with special jackets to inject the puppies with cocaine.

National Institutes of Health injected beagle puppies with cocaine
Greg Nash/Pool via AP
Remove Ads

White Coat Waste Project has continued its investigation into the government’s abuse of dogs, particularly beagles in cruel and unusual experiments at the cost to the taxpayer. Its latest discovery exposes how the National Institutes of Health performed cocaine tests on puppies to fulfill a red tape requirement by the FDA.

According to data procured through the Freedom of Information Act, which includes photographs of the dogs, seven six-month-old beagle puppies were trained to wear a jacket by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (which is part of the NIH) researchers.

However, these were not normal jackets; instead, the jackets were loaded with hypodermic needles that injected the animals full of cocaine.

For several months, the puppies were dosed with the narcotic substance, along with an “experimental compound” to study the interaction of the two drugs. The experiment ran from September 2020 to September 2021, and a report on its findings is due in May 2022.

According to the details discovered by the non-profit organization, researchers filmed the puppies to see if any of them had “adverse reactions” to the drugs. Prior to being outfitted with the drug vest, the dogs were also forced to undergo surgery to be implanted with a “telemetry unit” to monitor their vitals.

At the end of the testing period, the beagles were not released and were instead “recycled,” or killed. “Recycling” refers to shipping off the dogs to use in other experiments.

The dogs, which were dubbed “coke hounds” were not the only ones to be experimented on by the government agency.

The WCWP reports that a second experiment, which ran from March 2020 to March 2021 also used special jackets to inject beagles with cocaine, using six in the experiments. In other words, the scientists conducted the same experiments twice.

“Why do the same experiment twice? Why even do it once? We don’t know — but what we do know is that you’re footing the bill. These two experiments cost taxpayers over $2.3 million dollars,” WCWP pointed out.

Both experiments were conducted at the Charles River Laboratories, which also conducts experiments on monkeys to be used in NIH experiments.

These dogs experienced more pain before their first birthday than any dog should have to experience in its lifetime — all for the purpose of writing a report. According to documents we obtained via FOIA requests, the report “may be submitted by NIDA to the FDA” — even though the FDA has said that it does not require drugs to be tested in dogs.

And who’s doing the experiments, and receiving your money? The experiments were contracted to SRI International — the same organization that spent taxpayer money to poison and “de-bark” beagle puppies. Since they didn’t have the correct equipment, however, they outsourced their experiments to Charles River Laboratories — the same organization that “maintains” the monkeys of Morgan Island, so they can be used in wasteful and cruel NIH experiments.

#BeagleGate just got bigger. Taxpayers should not be forced to foot the multi-million-dollar bill for wasteful and cruel 'Coke Hound' experiments in which beagle puppies are injected with cocaine to fulfill just to fulfill burdensome and outdated FDA red tape. The NIH is addicted to spending and it's time we got this waste and abuse off of the taxpayer's back,” said Devin Murphy, public policy and communications manager of White Coat Waste Project in a statement.

Remove Ads
Remove Ads

Rebel News Store

Purchase your new wardrobe staple today at the Rebel News Store.

Buy Now

Don't Get Censored

Big Tech is censoring us. Sign up so we can always stay in touch.

Remove Ads