The National Police Association Files FOIA Suit Against NIH for Hiding Records Related to Dr. Anthony Fauci's Researchers' Violations of Federal Animal Cruelty Law

INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Police Association (NPA) announced today that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health (NIH), for its refusal to act on a request for records. The NPA's December 2021 FOIA request asked for all records involving the financial information as well as the contracts and grants with academic institutions, research organizations, government agencies, foreign entities, and other entities that conducted cordectomies upon beagle dogs.

The White Coat Waste Project, a nonprofit government spending watchdog, previously obtained evidence Dr. Anthony Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the NIH, had engaged as recently as 2017 in slitting the vocal cords of beagles used in their medical experiments. A cordectomy or 'debarking', is not itself a medical experiment. It is rather a procedure performed so that researchers won't have to hear the cries of suffering and anguish from their subjects. 

In a 2021 emailed statement to MedPage Today, NIAID stated "Vocal cordectomies, conducted humanely under anesthesia, may be used in research facilities where numerous dogs are present," indicating cordectomies have continued since 2017. In 2017 there was no federal animal cruelty law that could have protected the beagles from having their vocal cords slit. But in 2019, two years before the NIAID email statement, the law had changed.

On November 25, 2019 President Trump signed the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act (PACT) which bans conduct in which one or more living non-human mammals, birds, reptiles, or amphibians is purposely crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, impaled, or otherwise subjected to serious bodily injury. Medical experiments are exempt from the law, but slitting the vocal cords of beagles so that their screams can't be heard is not a medical experiment. Even before the criminal law was passed the practice had been condemned by the American Animal Hospital Association, the American Veterinary Medical Association, and the Humane Society among others. The penalty for violating the law can include a fine, a prison term of up to seven years, or both.

"NIH has been hiding the requested documents for almost a year in violation of FOIA law. This is the literal definition of a cover-up," said National Police Association spokesperson Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith (Ret). "The unlawful cover-up of Fauci's researchers' actions strongly indicates they have something to hide.

The NPA's lawsuit can be viewed here: https://nationalpolice.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/NPA-v-NIH.pdf

The National Police Association is represented by C. Peter Sorenson of the Sorenson Law Office.

About The National Police Association: The National Police Association (NPA) is a 501(c)3 Educational/Advocacy non-profit organization. For additional information visit www.nationalpolice.org .

Media contact:
Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith (Ret)
302-469-1765
[email protected]

SOURCE National Police Association