![\"Dinosaur](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.animals24-7.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Picsart_25-05-17_19-51-12-841-e1747536707175.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/p>\n(Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 WASHINGTON D.C.\u2013\u2013<\/strong>\u201cThe Donald Trump administration\u2019s Department of Defense has announced that it is cutting funding for wasteful and cruel experiments on cats,\u201d\u00a0 posted White Coat Waste digital marketing expert Allison McDonald on the afternoon of May 17,\u00a0 2025.<\/p>\n The first-line mention of Trump, \u00a0and that the release came from a \u201cdigital marketing expert,\u201d\u00a0 i.e. an electronic flack,\u00a0 rather than a campaign figurehead,\u00a0 revealed quite a bit about how the war was won through use of right-leaning social media.<\/p>\n \u201cWhite Coast Waste investigations,\u201d\u00a0 hitting social media in July 2024, \u00a0\u201cexposed how the Department of Defense has been wasting $10.8 million of taxpayers\u2019 money to cripple and electroshock cats in constipation, \u00a0incontinence, \u00a0and erectile dysfunction experiments\u201d at the University of Pittsburgh,\u00a0 McDonald continued.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe DOD\u2019s decision follows pressure from Elon Musk and Laura Loomer,\u201d\u00a0 McDonald added,\u00a0 \u00a0mentioning two more far-right media icons.<\/p>\n \u201cThe cats victory comes days after White Coat Waste shut down the National Institutes of Health\u2019s last in-house dog lab following a nine-year White Coat Waste campaign,\u201d\u00a0 McDonald recounted,\u00a0 then detailed the campaign history.<\/p>\n The bottom line:\u00a0 Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth\u202f\u201dcut the money.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes,\u00a0 McDonald mentioned Hegseth too.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Alexandra Koch of Fox News on May 4,\u00a0 2025 broadcast that National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya had closed \u201cthe last in-house beagle laboratory on the NIH campus,\u00a0 just days after Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk posted on X that he would investigate funding beagle experiments,\u201d\u00a0 following \u201cA report from the White Coat Waste project that detailed the lab\u2019s history of allegedly pumping pneumonia-causing bacteria into more than 2,000 beagles\u2019 lungs, bleeding them out, and forcing them into septic shock for deadly experiments.\u201d<\/p>\n The experiments were conducted over 40 years.<\/p>\n Cautioned Humane World for Animals president Kitty Block,\u00a0 \u201cThis does not mean that the National Institutes of Health has stopped funding dog tests entirely, \u00a0nor does it end the continued use of dogs in experiments that are not funded by NIH. \u00a0But it\u2019s a step forward, \u00a0and it\u2019s one we are determined will be a sign of a larger change.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Unspoken was acknowledgement that White Coat Waste has recently won again and again on battlefields where much older and bigger animal advocacy groups have bogged down for decades like World War I combatants mired in muddy trenches.<\/p>\n Anthony Bellotti, president White Coat Waste Project. (Facebook photo)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe had to push it to the right,\u201d White Coat Waste Project founder Anthony Bellotti said of opposition to animal-based biomedical research,\u00a0 speaking to\u00a0Yasmeen Abutaleb\u00a0and\u00a0Beth Reinhard of the Washington Post<\/em> in November 2021.<\/p>\n Opposition to animal-based biomedical research had already historically been a cause of the right since the mid-19th century.<\/p>\n Much of the nineteenth century opposition was based on the notion that the Biblical God created humanity in His own image,\u00a0 not through evolution as outlined by Charles Darwin,\u00a0 and that dissecting animals could therefore tell humans little about how to treat human conditions and diseases.<\/p>\n This theme dominated anti-vivisectionism for more than 100 years.<\/p>\n (See Fauci vs. the White Coat Waste Project: did Hans Ruesch sire the conflict?<\/a><\/strong> <\/em>and Conservatism, the religious right, & the evolution of anti-vivisectionism<\/a><\/em><\/strong>.)<\/em><\/p>\n Charles Darwin & friend.<\/strong><\/em> Opposing animal-based biomedical research was in fact so much perceived as a cause of the right that between 1895 and 1920 most mainstream humane societies,\u00a0 seeing themselves as inherently allied with left-leaning social reform causes,\u00a0 emphatically split with religiously motivated fundamentalist anti-vivisectionists.<\/p>\n That was no small schism.\u00a0 By 1920 almost every major U.S. city had a local anti-vivisection society,\u00a0 actively opposing vaccinations and fluoridated water,\u00a0 having ever less to do with advocacy for animals.<\/p>\n Rather than reunite with anti-vivisectionists in the mid-1940s,\u00a0 the American SPCA,\u00a0 founded in 1866,\u00a0 \u00a0and the American Humane Association,\u00a0 founded in 1877, \u00a0each grudgingly accepted \u201cpound seizure,\u201d\u00a0 meaning the use of impounded dogs and cats in biomedical research.<\/p>\n This led directly to the formation by breakaway ASPCA and American Humane Association members of the Animal Welfare Institute in 1951 and the Humane Society of the U.S. in 1954.<\/p>\n University of Wisconsin Primate Research Center founder Harry Harlow.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Politically mainstream,\u00a0 the Animal Welfare Institute and Humane Society of the U.S. evolved strategies of \u201cmoderate\u201d or \u201cwelfarist\u201d opposition to animal use in biomedical research,\u00a0 stopping short of aligning themselves with the abolitionist approach of the anti-vivisectionists,\u00a0 whose organizations by then had become,\u00a0 through the growing influence of the biomedical research industry, \u00a0politically marginalized and economically failing.<\/p>\n The rise of the late 20th century animal rights movement out of the 1960s-1970s era of campus activism,\u00a0 originally focused on civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War, \u00a0pushed public perception of opposition to animal experiments far to the left.<\/p>\n A 1970 bombing at the University of Wisconsin Primate Research Center heightened the perceived linkage of causes,\u00a0 even after the bombing was found to have been a failed attempt by four anti-Vietnam War protesters to bomb the Army Mathematics Research Center across the street.<\/p>\n (See NIH kills one of last legacies of vivisector Harry Harlow<\/a>.)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Former racing driver turned author Hans Ruesch (1913-2007) led the \u201cscientific\u201d anti-vivisection cause for the last 30 years of his life.<\/strong><\/em> Animal rights movement opposition to animal experiments shifted from \u201cscientific\u201d anti-vivisectionism,\u00a0 based on the idea that animals are so unlike humans that animal-based research is useless,\u00a0 to the idea that animals and humans are so much alike that doing anything to an animal that would be perceived as too cruel to do to a human is inherently also too cruel to do to the animal.<\/p>\n After some initial successes,\u00a0 however,\u00a0\u00a0 ending for all practical purposes with winning a 1985 set of amendments to the Animal Welfare Act on behalf of dogs and non-human primates,\u00a0 the \u201canimal rights\u201d approach to anti-vivisectionism stalled.<\/p>\n Even as the animal cause changed mainstream American culture on other fronts,\u00a0 federal funding for animal-based biomedical research doubled.<\/p>\n Bellotti,\u00a0 a former Republican political strategist whose misgivings about animal experiments originated during a high school internship at a biomedical research lab,\u00a0 formed the White Coast Waste Project in 2013.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Bypassing the \u201canimals are like us\/not like us\u201d argument entirely,\u00a0 Bellotti targeted specifically federally funded cruel experiments using dogs, \u00a0cats,\u00a0 and sometimes monkeys,\u00a0 arguing simply that\u2013\u2013besides being cruel\u2013\u2013they waste taxpayer money.<\/p>\n Avoiding criticism of privately funded research,\u00a0 and of experiments on rodents,\u00a0 rabbits,\u00a0 and non-mammals,\u00a0 White Coast Waste opened influential doors during the first Donald Trump administration.<\/p>\n Since then,\u00a0 White Coat Waste almost seems to have written the biomedical research agenda in the early months of the budget-slashing second Donald Trump administration.<\/p>\n The National Institutes of Health,\u00a0 Food & Drug Administration,\u00a0 and Environmental Protection Agency have all introduced policy changes defunding or constricting funding for animal experiments.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Simultaneously,\u00a0 the Trump administration, \u00a0for officially unrelated reasons, \u00a0has frozen research funding to universities including Harvard, Columbia,\u00a0 Cornell,\u00a0 Northwestern,\u00a0 the University of Pennsylvania,\u00a0 Princeton,\u00a0 and Brown.<\/p>\n Three of these seven universities include among their faculty four of the \u201cFaces of Waste\u201d identified by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] \u00a0in a May 7,\u00a0 2025 media release subtitled \u201c14 Experimenters Wasted $500 Million Killing Animals.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPETA has pointed out frivolous spending and government waste for far longer than those have been buzzwords,\u201d\u00a0 the PETA media release continued,\u00a0 in backhanded acknowledgement of White Coat Waste Project influence.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe animal experimentation industry is rife with pointlessness that somehow absorbs taxpayer dollars like a dry sponge,\u201d\u00a0 PETA said. \u00a0\u201cThese 14 people are experimenters who set fire to taxpayer dollars by the fistful. \u00a0Each of their experiments plumbs new depths of cruelty or pointlessness. \u00a0Often both.\u201d<\/p>\n Among them were Augustine Choi of Cornell University,\u00a0 Michael Platt of the University of Pennsylvania,\u00a0 and George Daley and Margaret Livingstone of the Harvard Medical School.<\/p>\n (See \u201cStop torturing baby monkeys!\u201d Harvard Animal Law Clinic tells Harvard Med<\/a>.)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Paradoxically,\u00a0 the Harvard Law School also hosts the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law & Policy and the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program.<\/p>\n However,\u00a0 according to Delcianna Winders,\u00a0 who was the first academic fellow of the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program and now heads the Animal Law & Policy Institute at the Vermont Law & Graduate School,\u00a0 the Harvard animal law programs are \u201cfunded by a $10 million endowment and thus should not be imperiled by the showdown between Harvard and the Trump administration.\u201d<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n PETA has also charged through a door opened by White Coat Waste Project,\u00a0 specifically a federal budget amendment to ban research facilities from using public funds to cover \u201cmedically unnecessary\u201d testing on dogs and cats,\u00a0 to try to close the sixty-year-old Oregon National Primate Research Center at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have accused the university of abusing monkeys by keeping them confined in tight areas and neglecting to treat them when they\u2019re sick,\u201d\u00a0 summarized Jashayla Pettigrew for KOIN television news on May 14, 2025.<\/p>\n The PETA complaints began after undercover operative Matt Rossell exposed alleged psychological neglect of the animals there in August 2000,\u00a0 having worked for two years at the center as a primate care tech.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Oregon Health Sciences University,\u00a0 responsible for the center and the 2,500 primates kept there, hired pathology and psychology professor Carol Shively, of Wake Forest University in Raleigh, North Carolina, to assess Rossell\u2019s charges.<\/p>\n Shively essentially upheld Rossell\u2019s complaints,\u00a0 according to WW News<\/em> reporter Philip Dawdy,\u00a0 who got the Shively report in March 2001 after three months of legal skirmishing to force Oregon Health Sciences University to comply with the state public records disclosure act.<\/p>\n But the problems were not fixed.\u00a0 The Oregon National Primate Center \u201chas violated the federal Animal Welfare Act repeatedly year after year,\u201d \u00a0testified Amy Meyer for PETA at a May 13,\u00a0 2025 House Committee On Emergency Management, General Government, \u00a0& Veterans hearing.<\/p>\n \u201cThey cannot get it right,\u201d\u00a0 Meyer charged,\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cand every violation cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture means horrific suffering and often a terrible death has happened to the monkeys caged there.\u201d<\/p>\n Wayne Pacelle at Chimp Haven sanctuary for ex-NIH chimps in Lousiana.<\/strong><\/em> \u201cThe New England Regional Primate Center was shuttered more than a decade ago,\u201d\u00a0 noted Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle,\u00a0 pointing out that even Oregon governor Tina Kotek \u201crecently and publicly advocated for the closure of the Oregon National Primate Research Center.<\/p>\n \u201cIn late March 2025,\u201d\u00a0 Pacelle said, \u00a0\u201cher office confirmed that she urged Oregon Health Sciences University leadership to complete their current research obligations and move toward shutting down the center in a humane and responsible manner.\u201d<\/p>\n Pacelle on May 13,\u00a0 2025 asked National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya to close the Oregon National Primate Research Center,\u00a0 and asked\u00a0Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy members to write letters in support of same.<\/p>\n (Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Even the\u00a0New England Anti-Vivisection Society,\u00a0 founded in 1895,\u00a0 long semi-moribund,\u00a0 rebranded\u00a0Rise for Animals\u00a0in 2020,\u00a0 seems to have come alive amid the Trumpist political fervor to dismantle self-serving \u201cdeep state\u201d bureaucracy.<\/p>\n Recounted Rise for Animals in a May 13, \u00a02025 email to donors,\u00a0 \u201cLast week, \u00a0our co-plaintiff and expert counsel, \u00a0the Animal Legal Defense Fund,\u00a0 stood before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to fight for what the USDA has tried desperately to avoid: transparency, accountability, and the rule of law.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a clandestine move,\u201d\u00a0 Rise for Animals detailed, \u00a0\u201cthe USDA abandoned its legal duty to conduct routine annual inspections of all registered animal research facilities. \u00a0Instead, \u00a0the agency secretly directed its inspectors to perform only so-called \u00a0\u201cfocused\u201d inspections of facilities claiming voluntary accreditation by a private industry trade group,\u201d\u00a0 the Association for Assessment & Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International.<\/p>\n\u201cPush it to the right\u201d strategy wins\u2013\u2013& takes other animal groups to the right as well<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nMusk,\u00a0 Loomer,\u00a0 & Hegseth<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nNIH shut last beagle lab<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cWe had to push it to the right\u201d<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
(Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nHumane societies split with AV<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nSwing to the left<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
(Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nAV movement stalled<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nWhite Coat Waste followed the money<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cFaces of Waste\u201d<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cRife with pointlessness\u201d<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nOregon National Primate Research Center<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nProblems not fixed in 25 years<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
(Beth Clifton collage)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\u201cShut it down,\u201d\u00a0 says Pacelle<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nRise for Animals wakes up<\/h2>\n