Rand Paul uncovers $15 million taxpayer-funded cat experiments
Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) annual government waste report, published Monday, revealed nearly $15 million in taxpayer medical testing on cats involving electroshock therapy, induced vomiting, and other cruel forms of experimentation.
Paul’s annual Festivus Report included over $1 trillion in projects for drag queen ice-skating, pickleball court construction, and the efficacy of magic, but it also outlined several projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department that involved torturous experiments on cats.
Federal public health agencies have a sordid history of funding experiments on cats and dogs in the name of improving human health, but public outcry about these types of projects drew the largest public ire during the COVID-19 pandemic when it was uncovered that the then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, funded torturous experiments on beagle puppies.
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According to Paul’s Festivus report this year, the NIH has spent more than $1.5 million on what he characterizes as “medieval-type experiments” on kittens involving electroshock therapy and spinning apparatuses to test motion sickness.
Female kittens as young as four months old, who are selected because they are more “amenable” to testing, are “kept tied down for hours at a time and for weeks on end” according to the report to train them before they are put into hydraulic gyroscopes that spin rapidly to induce motion sickness.
Paul’s report outlines that, before experimentation, the researchers “zombify” the cats, severing or completely removing parts of their brains to ensure that they are alive but lack any cognitive function. This, Paul says, turns “them into unresponsive shells that can be spun, shocked and abused without resistance.”
Scientists justify the experiment by saying that it will potentially aid in developing treatments for vertigo in humans and understanding the effects of space travel on the human body.
“But let’s be honest,” Paul writes in the report. “Does any of this justify the sheer cruelty these animals are subjected to? I’m guessing the American people would say no.”
The report also describes a nearly $11 million experiment from the DOD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to see if electroshock therapy can cure erectile dysfunction and constipation.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh inserted electrodes into the spinal cords of male cats to induce erections by electric shock.
“These cats were then subjected to even more electric shocks, sometimes for up to 10 minutes at a time, before having their spinal cords severed to paralyze their lower bodies,” reads Paul’s report. “And just for good measure, the shocks continued for another 10 minutes.”
Another DARPA-funded project at Pitt involved the same attachment of electrodes to the spinal cord and the insertion of “condom-balloons into their colons and marbles into their rectums” in order to study the effects of electrotherapy on constipation.
“Apparently, nothing says ‘national defense’ quite like torturing cats to poop marbles,” Paul writes.
NIH, in tandem with the Agriculture Department, also spent $2.24 million since 2022 on testing whether cats can catch and spread COVID-19.
The nearly $15 million in cat experimentation was first highlighted by the White Coat Waste Project, a nonprofit organization aimed to stop cruel animal testing in government-funded labs.
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Justin Goodman, senior vice president at WCW, told the Washington Examiner that he hopes that the new Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, will use Paul’s report as “a reliable road map of reckless spending” to squelch as quickly as possible.
“A growing majority of taxpayers — Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike — oppose Uncle Sam’s wasteful, dangerous, and cruel animal experiments at home and abroad and don’t want to be forced to pay billions for these boondoggles,” Goodman said.
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