A bombshell White Coat Waste investigation released this week documents more than $225 million in new National Institutes of Health funding for dog and cat experiments awarded, supplemented, renewed, or extended since February 2025.
The total includes new grants and contracts, additional discretionary money for existing awards, and project extensions that keep taxpayer-funded laboratories running.
By June, White Coat Waste had identified more than $150 million, and by early September the figure had jumped to more than $225 million, a roughly 50 percent increase.
Nearly 44 percent of the identified spending, more than $98 million, went to pharmaceutical companies conducting dog tests. Another $11.7 million supported invasive cat experiments.
That $225 million-plus exceeds the NIH’s highly publicized $150 million investment in non-animal methods, or new approach methodologies, by more than $75 million.
The Trump administration has repeatedly moved federal research away from outdated animal models toward modern, human-relevant tools such as organoids, tissue chips, computational models, and real-world data.
Hellbound and Down 