Saturday, June 8, 2024

Exposing Fauci's NIH/ NIAID Lapdog Apologists

Glenn Greenwald, "COVER-UP ON DOG EXPERIMENTS"
How NIAID, with key help from the Washington Post, turned a true story into a “right-wing conspiracy theory”
By Leighton Woodhouse Leighton Woodhouse

On the morning of October 25, 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci dashed off an email to eight of his colleagues, asking them to look into an experiment conducted in Tunisia in 2019. It was urgent. “I want this done right away,” he wrote, “since we are getting bombarded by protests.”

The experiment Fauci was referring to was the one that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene asked him about this week in a heated Congressional hearing. Holding up a photograph on poster board of two beagles with their heads locked into mesh cages, she said, “As director of the NIH, you did sign off on these so-called ‘scientific experiments,’ and as a dog lover, I want to tell you this is disgusting, and evil.”        
Greene is to liberals what Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is to conservatives: an easy target for partisans to mock. Her questioning of Fauci predictably inspired the usual derision. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, referring to Greene as “the consistent frontrunner for stupidest member of the House of Representatives in history,” sneered, “No one knew what she was talking about.”

But in fact, Fauci knew exactly what Greene was talking about. Three years ago, the experiment in question was at the center of an entire crisis communications response within NIAID (the institute within NIH run by Dr. Fauci). Fauci claimed that it had provoked so many angry calls that his assistant had to stop answering the phone for two weeks. The day before Fauci sent his email about being “bombarded by protests,” one of his colleagues had advised him, “It might be wise to hold off on TV until we have a handle on this.” The story had become a full-blown publicity crisis for Fauci and NIAID — until the Washington Post came to his rescue, turning a legitimate news story into “right-wing disinformation,” based on flimsy evidence that was literally concocted by Fauci’s team.

In 2019, under the auspices of a microbiologist at the University of Ohio, researchers in Tunisia placed the heads of sedated beagles in mesh bags filled with starved sand flies. This was the image Rep. Greene had held up at this week’s hearing. Later, the beagles were placed in outdoor cages for nine consecutive nights, in an area dense with sand flies infected with a parasite that carries the disease with which the researchers were trying to infect the dogs.

In his paper, the Ohio microbiologist, Abhay Satoskar, along with his research partner, acknowledged funding from NIAID, which added up to about $80,000, alongside the grant number. The grant application read:
"Dogs will be exposed to sand fly bites each night throughout the sand fly season to ensure transmission.  Dogs will be anesthetized... and for two hors will be placed in a cage containing between 15 and 30 females..."
The description fits the experiments in Tunisia perfectly.

In August of 2021, White Coat Waste Project, a non-profit group that advocates against federal funding of animal experimentation, exposed NIAID’s support for the experiment in a blog post. In October, based on White Coat Waste’s revelations, a bipartisan group of Congressional representatives released a letter expressing concern about cruel NIAID-funded experiments on dogs, drawing particular attention to the fact that some of the dogs had had their vocal cords severed to keep them from barking and howling in pain and distress. The story generated a maelstrom online, leading to the angry phone calls Fauci claimed to have received.  “#ArrestFauci” trended on Twitter.

NIAID staff went into damage control mode. Within hours of Fauci asking his staff to look into the experiment, Satoskar emailed NIAID, following up on a phone call. Satoskar now claimed that the acknowledgment of NIH funding was a mistake. “This grant was mistakenly cited as a funding source in the paper,” he wrote.

Later, NIAID would claim that it only funded an experiment that involved vaccinating the dogs against Leishmaniasis, the disease carried by the parasites in the sand flies. Leishmaniasis is the disease with which Satoskar infected his subject beagles in Tunisia.

There is no way to know what was said on the phone call with Satoskar, but released emails show that this is exactly what NIAID wanted to hear. “Will you forward this to Dr. Fauci or let me know if I should directly forward to him?”, the recipient of the email at NIAID wrote to a colleague (the names in the emails, which were obtained by a FOIA request from White Coat Waste Project, are redacted).


Satoskar then hurried to delink the paper from NIAID funding. Less than ten minutes after sending his email to NIAID, Satoskar emailed Shaden Kamhawi, editor of PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, the journal that had published the paper on the experiment. “We would like to request correction of this error,” Satoskar wrote.

He might as well have been asking himself. Kamhawi is a colleague of Satoskar. She is an expert on precisely the subject that Satoskar was studying. “Dr. Kamhawi is a world expert on phlebotomine sand flies,” her curriculum vitae reads, “vectors of the neglected tropical disease leishmaniasis.” Like Satoskar, Kamhawi has conducted research in which she used sand flies to infect beagles with the disease. She has even co-published with him. Indeed, Kamhawi’s own research has been the subject of White Coat Waste Project exposé. On top of that, she is an employee of NIAID: meaning that Anthony Fauci is her boss.

Kamhawi was aware of at least the last of these potential conflicts of interest. “BTW,” she emailed her colleagues at PLOS NTD, “as I am an NIAID employee, “I am not sure if there is a COI [Conflict of Interest] here so please let me know.”

It’s unclear whether the journal took that conflict seriously. In any case, the correction went forward. The journal now read:
“There are errors in the Funding statement. The correct Funding statement is as follows: the authors received no specific funding for this work. The US National Institutes of Health and the Wellcome Trust did not provide any funding for this research and any such claim was made in error.”
This was the exonerating evidence that went out to reporters. On October 27th, a NIAID employee wrote to colleagues that “we can at least share with reporters that the journal has made the correction.” Another NIAID staffer emailed colleagues for help fielding a query from an Associated Press “fact checker,” who asked how NIAID could be sure that their funds weren’t used for the Tunisian beagle experiment. “Our evidence is simply the statement of the PI [Principal Investigator], Dr. Satoskar,” came the reply.

In fact, NIAID had no way to be certain that its funds were not used on the Tunisia experiment. Michael Fenton, Director of NIAID’s Division of Extramural Activities, wrote in an email, “It seems to me that the only way to prove that the grant funds weren’t used for other projects is to do an audit of those grant expenditures and invoices. This would not be something that could be done quickly.”  

The next day, NIAID was still putting out fires. “We are still getting clobbered on this,” one wrote in an email. But three days before, NIAID had scored a huge coup: On October 25, the same day Fauci wrote his “bombarded by protests” note, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote a column facetiously entitled, “Why is Anthony Fauci trying to kill my puppy?” The article maligned the story as a product of "the right wing disinformation machine and its' crusade against Dr. Fauci.” and cited the correction in PLOS NTD as evidence that it was all just an innocent mistake.

In an email to a NIAID employee the next day, Milbank offered further assistance. He wrote, “I might do a follow-up column on the reaction, and the imperviousness to facts. Do you have any more info that could further prove that you didn't fund the Tunisia study involving feeding the anesthetized dogs to sand flies?” Forwarding Milbank’s story to colleagues, the NIAID staffer wrote approvingly, “Dana is being extremely helpful.”

From Milbank’s story came a cascade of “fact checks”: from Politifact, Snopes, FactCheck.org, MediaMatters, Mic, and USA Today. Then came a big story in the Washington Post about the “viral and false claim” that NIAID had funded the Tunisia experiment. The reporters who wrote the story had evidently already reached their conclusion before they began reporting on it. Their email to Satoskar and others asking for comment opened, “I am working on a story about a massive disinformation campaign that is being waged against Anthony Fauci.”

The media re-framing of the story had its intended effect. Three years later, following Marjorie Taylor Greene’s questioning, reporters are once again citing PLOS NTD’s correction as the definitive debunking of the beagle experiment story. The Washington Post effectively banished it from mainstream public debate, though today, the paper published a fact check that contradicts much of the Post’s previous reporting.

After the story came out, Beth Reinhard, one of the reporters on the Post story, emailed Satoskar the link. “Thanks Beth. This is a great article clearing up all misinformation and falsehood,” he wrote.

“Thanks!” she replied. 

32 comments:

  1. But Kristi Koem shooting dogs and goats for no reason gets a thumbs up from you?

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  2. Knome. You thought her blasting Chicket to death with a shotgun was awesome.

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  3. It would have been okay with you if she tortured them first, and cut their vocal chords so they could scream in pain? 60,000 of them?

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  4. No, because she's a republiturd. It would only have been ok with me if she was a Democrat. **sarcasm** Though I'm sure that's what you believe.

    Actually, all those dogs had rabies, were biting people and had to be put down. **more sarcasm**

    BUT... isn't it ok to murder a dog if you pretend it had rabies? Like you did when you defended Noem shooting Cricket? Nobody ever said Cricket had rabies that I ever heard (except you).

    As for Anthony Fauci and these beagles that were tortured, he personally signed off on that? Is that what is being alleged? I didn't watch the video. I don't have the data to do so right now. I'm interested in what lies Greenwald is very likely spinning. I'll have to watch it later.

    Are you opposed to animal testing? Or is this just an issue of concern for you because it is something else to attack Anthony Fauci over?

    Mystere likely believes (if he responds I'm sure he will agree) that Anthony Fauci is EVIL and (possibly) tortured some of these dogs himself. Because he enjoys causing misery and suffering. As per Mystere's tinfoil hat nuttery, Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates are conspiring to kill off Billions of people in an effort to depopulate the Earth. Have you heard this conspiracy theory and agree with it?

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  5. I never said she had rabies. If she had contracted rabies, she would have had to have been monitored and tested.

    I defended her for shooting a dog that bit her, a perfectly legit thing to do.

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  6. As for "attacking Fauci", he attacked first. He covered up his animal cruelty by pretending it was all a right-wing conspiracy theory. And so now he must accept all the well-deserved blowback that you would prefer to "excuse" because he's a cause celeb for creating and releasing deadly virus' for the US military and after 3 US accidents, shifting all the virus gain of function research overseas (China & Ukraine) where it can't be monitored or critically reported.

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  7. Oh, that's right, that's all an RFK, Jr "conspiracy theory". @@

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  8. Why so serious, Dervy?

    Here's why (from the WaPo smear):

    Above all, this is no frivolous pursuit: The drugs under study are promising next-generation antiretrovirals that can be administered to HIV/AIDS patients less frequently - potentially saving countless human lives.

    The Gay Mafia strikes again.

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  9. I wonder what kind of condo's the government gives out under San Francisco HIV housing assistance... Bay Views, I'd hope. Nothing's too good for the fudge packing brigades.

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  10. Cash/Housing Assistance
    $3.3 billion of the FY 2022 budget for HIV was for cash and housing assistance in the U.S. (8% of the overall budget and 9% of the domestic budget), a 12% increase over the FY 2018 level of $3 billion. This includes mandatory spending estimates for SSI and SSDI, which provide cash assistance to disabled and older individuals with HIV. Housing assistance, through the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS Program (HOPWA), is discretionary and received $450 million in FY 2022, a $75 million (20%) increase over the FY 2018 level.

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  11. Lets see... $43b for AIDS, while NASA gets $25.4 billion, an increase of $508.7 million above fiscal year 2024.

    There went that Moon colony...

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  12. Minus lied: I never said she had rabies.

    Joe Conservative. May 2, 2024 at 12:18 PM.
    Minus: ps - The dog bit her. What do you think it would do to Catturd? What do you do with a rabid dog? Put -it- down.

    Minus: ...you would prefer to "excuse" because he's a cause celeb...

    No. I don't excuse animal cruelty.

    Minus: ...for creating and releasing deadly virus' for the US military and after 3 US accidents, shifting all the virus gain of function research overseas (China & Ukraine) where it can't be monitored or critically reported.

    Those are your tinfoil hat delusions.

    "Gay Mafia" = h0mophobic delusions. There is no "gay mafia". This -- and your BS about about woke being a religion -- are delusions caused by your white fragility. White supremacists (like you) are very afraid of losing their White Privilege. This BS only works with other bigots. It certainly does not work with Democrats.

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  13. The dog bit her. What would you do with a rabid dog. Put her down.

    Implied in the analogy, not a statement of infection. A dog bites a person in a court of law irregardless of rabies status is sentenced to euthenasia.

    Those are your tinfoil hat delusions., No, they're RFK Jrs. Watch his interview with Tucker. He never states anything that he can't back up with data.

    Fauci was the Gay Mafia's first sponsor, as he led the effort to "normalize" gay sex with his ridiculous fiction scare of "heterosexual AIDS" (an EXTREMELY RARE possibility due to required viral load factors - read Fumento's "The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS). Fauci is the patron saint of homosexuals.

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  14. btw - white fragility is the mentality and proof for and of the cancellation cult, not me.

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  15. ps - All that "heterosexual AIDS" in Africa? Contaminated blood supply and the practice of re-using & sterilizing (ha-ha) dirty needles in mass vaccination campaigns.

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  16. Why do you suppose the health authorities in the US distribute needles to drug addicts gratis?

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  17. NIH & NIAID were the primary enablers of world AIDS and creation of the deadliest diseases (like Covid and SARS in world history.

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  18. Bubonic plague too? ;-P

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  19. Maybe just juice up it's deadliness a bit.

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  20. "NIH & NIAID were the primary enablers of world AIDS and creation of the deadliest diseases (like Covid and SARS in world history".

    Tinfoil hate nuttery ("hate" subbed in for "hat" on purpose).

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  21. Minus: A dog bites a person in a court of law irregardless of rabies status is sentenced to euthenasia.

    Bullshit.

    Google: In some cases, if the dog has a history of aggressive behavior or has caused severe injuries, a court may order the dog to be put down. This is typically a last resort and only occurs when other options, such as rehabilitation, have been exhausted.

    Should I get rid of my dog for biting?

    Most dogs that bite do not need to be put down.

    You should use modern no-harm training methods and take proper precautions when your dog is around others. However, if the attack leads to a criminal charge, the court may determine the dog is a danger to public safety and may require that they be euthanized.

    What COURT sentenced Cricket to death???

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  22. The court of what pet owners are permitted to do...

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  23. btw - What court has arrested Tony fauci on 60,000 a year counts?

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  24. Animal cruelty is illegal. Cricket likely suffered. I do know (from her OWN account) that the goat she shot suffered.

    Google says that "South Dakota law allows for an animal to be killed if it's actively chasing or killing livestock", but the killing took place LATER. As Nome said in her book, she took Cricket to a gravel pit and shot her there. NOT while she was chasing the chickens.

    I have been bitten by a pet, and I never considered murdering it. Once when trying to break up a fight (it was an accident. One dog was trying to bite the other dog, not me). Also when cutting the nails of my dog I have received minor bites. Though mostly crying and trying to get away. Neither YOU nor Nome should not be allowed to own any pets.

    There is no evidence that Anthony Fauci knew anything about the legal medical experiments that involved beagles. Legal as far as I know. If anything illegal was done then those involved should be prosecuted.

    What court has arrested Tony fauci on 60,000 a year counts.

    Arrest him then. I'd think that would require some evidence, though. Like the citing of laws broken and proving that he was aware and signed off on something he knew was illegal.

    I never suggested Nome COULD be arrested. In the court of public opinion, however, many people do not like what she admitted to doing. The public was unaware that this occurred before SHE DECIDED to brag about it in her book. Anthony Fauci isn't bragging about killing dogs for medical research.

    I don't have a problem with this being investigated. Given that I am strongly opposed to animal cruelty. If Congress wants to write some new laws regarding medical research conducted on animals, I say they should form a committee, look into it, and come up with something. But republiturds won't. This is just about attacking Anthony Fauci.

    I don't where you are getting 60k from, Microsoft AI says "60,000 seems exaggerated based on available data".

    Also, as per the Microsoft AI...

    Legal Implications:

    The recent case involving Envigo RMS LLC, a corporation that bred and sold animals for scientific testing, highlights violations of federal law.

    The company's breeding facility in Cumberland, Virginia, was accused of neglecting thousands of beagles through inadequate veterinary care, unsanitary conditions, and insect-infested food. [Prosecute them!]

    In early April, Virginia's governor signed "beagle bills" to protect research animals and prevent dealers from operating after severe welfare violations.

    Additionally, some states have enacted "Beagle Freedom Laws", which mandate the release of retired research dogs for adoption when they are no longer needed for experiments.


    BUT... do you care about any of that? Or do you only care about attacking Anthony Fauci?

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  25. Putting sanflies in a sack and putting that sack on a beagle's head isn't animal cruelty? Who knew. But hey, so long as the 60k a year dogs didn't suffer, everything good, right?

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  26. Changing American laws won't prevent Fauci from offshoring it, like he did all those viral cleavage site marriage to deadly virus experiments?

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  27. btw - Fauci called and wanted to know if you've gotten your latest Covid-19 booster...

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