NIH spent billions on overseas animal testing but didn’t police anti-cruelty standards

The National Institutes of Health sent $2.2 billion to labs outside the U.S. to conduct animal testing over the last decade but didn’t follow up to make sure they were complying with American standards on preventing cruelty, according to a new audit Thursday.

The Government Accountability Office scolded NIH for tossing the money over the fence and hoping for the best, saying that the agency was relying on the labs to self-report violations.

Few problems were reported, but GAO investigators didn’t say whether that was because there were no issues or because the labs concealed misdeeds.

“Without taking steps to verify the information that award recipients report annually about animal research performed by foreign facilities, NIH lacks reasonable assurance that this information presents an accurate and complete record of the facilities’ care and use of laboratory animals,” the GAO said.

The report comes at a time when U.S. funding for foreign lab work is getting attention, particularly after American taxpayer money flowed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Some U.S. experts put the lab at the center of theories over the origins of the coronavirus.

GAO said NIH isn’t indifferent to the risks of mistreatment of animals in overseas labs and takes steps to try to promote good behavior.

That includes asking labs to agree to abide by their own local rules, as well as U.S. standards for the care of animals. NIH also requires annual reports and retains the right to demand changes if problems emerge.

But that all relies on information the foreign labs provide themselves, GAO said.

“NIH does not take steps, such as conducting site visits or requiring third-party verification, to ascertain the reliability of this information,” the audit said.

GAO’s report says Denmark and the Netherlands were the big dogs in U.S.-funded animal research, with their labs collecting nearly $1.3 billion in contracts or grants from 2011 to 2021.

China was a relatively minor player with just one NIH contract and 33 grants, totaling roughly $4 million over the same time.

Justin Goodman, senior vice president at the White Coat Waste Project, said his outfit’s revelations about U.S. funding for animal testing overseas helped prompt the GAO report.

Among those revelations were money flowing to Wuhan, and a grant to a Russian lab that mutilated cats and then made them walk on a treadmill.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill for foreign labs’ dangerous, cruel and wasteful animal experiments in Wuhan and beyond,” Mr. Goodman said. “Our message to Congress is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness!”

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill who pushed for the report said it confirmed their fears.

“Billions of American tax dollars are flowing from the NIH to foreign animal labs like the Wuhan Institute of Virology with virtually no accountability or transparency,” Rep. Brian Mast, Florida Republican, said. “NIH’s failure to properly police how tax dollars are spent in foreign animal testing labs is alarming and a threat to national security.”

Mr. Mast, who serves as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on oversight, said he’ll press NIH to do a better job keeping an eye on its spending.

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, co-chair of the Animal Protection Caucus, also demanded more oversight.

“The taxpayer dollars given to the NIH should not be used for obsolete and unnecessary medical testing,” the Pennsylvania Republican said.

NIH is taking steps to update its testing policy for the first time since 2012. One proposal would require foreign labs hoping to receive funds to proactively affirm each year that they didn’t have any compliance issues in their animal testing.

But GAO said that it still relies on the labs’ own assertions.

NIH told GAO investigators that foreign site visits were too expensive, particularly given the “limited” number of tests involved.

In its official response to GAO, NIH said it will provide an action plan to Congress for steps it can take.

Investigators didn’t identify any NIH-funded abuses in the report — the GAO said the records only go back four years — but did offer examples of animal-testing problems in labs funded by other parts of the U.S. government.

In one test, $1.6 million was sent to Thailand, where a lab ended up giving accidental doses of quinine to primate test subjects, killing three of them.