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Dec 9, 2025
NIH funds new cat experiments despite pledge to phase them out, watchdog reports
The Guardian
White Coat Waste finds $1.7m in NIH grants for cat research months after officials said they were working to end studies
The US National Institute of Health is continuing to fund new laboratory experiments on cats despite saying that they are "working tirelessly" to "phase out" such projects.
In July this year, Dr Nicole Kleinstreuer, the NIH acting deputy director, announced in a podcast with Dr Jay Bhattacharya, the NIH director. that she doesn't think the NIH should do research on dogs or cats. On the Director's Desk: The Future of Animal Models in Research, Dr Kleinstreuer said: "I think it's unconscionable" and "to phase them out, we are working tirelessly behind the scenes". However, she added the NIH is constrained under the law to leave existing grants in place.
However, documents uncovered by White Coat Waste (WCW), a watchdog campaigning to end taxpayer-funded animal experiments, reveal that since the July podcast, the NIH has awarded more than $1.7m in new and extended grants for experiments using cats.
New grants include $486,000 to study blood flow in the brain after stroke. In the study sixty kittens will have portions of their skulls removed, have viruses injected into their brains, are paralysed and have strokes induced. They undergo brain imaging before being killed.
Another, investigating gene therapy for human glaucoma, received a grant of $439,000. Three-month old 'mutant' kittens bred with glaucoma, are injected in the eye with viruses, restrained for examination and killed. Their eyes are then removed for dissection.
WCW says the allocation of new funds contradicts NIH's claim that it opposes the use of cats in experiments, and also argue that NIH's assertion that it's "legally constrained" from ending projects is false, noting NIH policy which states there is "no legal obligation to provide funding beyond the ending date of the current budget period".
Despite this, the NIH has extended seven cat studies since July with grants totalling
