In a shocking new exposé highlighting the grotesque waste and cruelty involved in federal science funding, watchdog White Coat Waste (WCW) has uncovered documents revealing how the University of Chicago is using millions in taxpayer dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to deliberately inflict the “most severe” strokes on dozens of dogs, only to kill them shortly after.
This barbaric practice, which involves blocking the animals’ brain arteries and subjecting them to immense suffering, comes as the NSF is already under fire for a litany of wasteful and inhumane animal experiments.
According to WCW’s investigation, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, the lab at the University of Chicago has conducted these experiments on at least 64 dogs, inducing what researchers themselves describe as the “most severe stroke” possible.
The process is cold and methodical, spanning three days:
- Day 1: The dogs undergo imaging scans and blood draws to establish baselines.
- Day 2: Experimenters block the animals’ middle cerebral arteries using coils, triggering massive strokes. The dogs are then assessed using a “stroke scale” to measure the damage.
- Day 3: The suffering ends – not with treatment or mercy, but with euthanasia. Lab documents admit that if the dogs were allowed to survive, they would endure “significant suffering” due to the lack of round-the-clock care equivalent to what human stroke patients receive.
These experiments are purportedly testing a stroke treatment that has already been proven safe and effective in human clinical trials, raising serious questions about why innocent dogs are being tortured and killed for redundant research.
WCW notes that this continues despite NIH’s pledges to phase out dog testing, led by figures such as Fauci-fan girl Nicole Kleinstreuer, who heads the agency’s efforts to promote non-animal alternatives.
While the NIH has wasted $4.9 million on these dog experiments, including a new $596,000 grant awarded in June with three more years of funding secured, the NSF’s involvement is even more egregious.
Portions of two massive NSF grants, totaling a staggering $40.5 million, are supporting the University of Chicago lab. The current active grant alone is worth $24.7 million and runs through August.
Those are your hard-earned tax dollars, part of the NSF’s bloated $9 billion annual budget, going straight to needlessly torturing man’s best friend.
This isn’t an isolated incident.
WCW has repeatedly blown the whistle on the NSF’s pattern of funding absurd and cruel animal tests, including poisoning puppies with experimental drugs, force-feeding cats to make them obese before injecting weight-loss cocktails, creating “transgender” lab mice by mutilating rat genitals or dosing them with cross-sex hormones, and injecting drugs into puppies’ eyes.
One particularly outrageous project, highlighted in Sen. Rand Paul’s 2025 Festivus Report, involved a $14.6 million NSF grant for primates playing Plinko after drilling into their skulls during invasive brain surgeries.
WCW, an organization dedicated to ending the taxpayer-funded animal testing industry, has long fought to defund the NSF, and they are not alone in the fight.
Just last month, The Gateway Pundit reported on WCW’s partnerships with Republican heavyweights to pressure the Trump administration into cutting off NSF funding for these atrocities.
Rep. Nancy Mace has been a key ally, introducing an amendment to the 2026 appropriations bill that would ban NSF funds from being used for any research causing pain or distress to domestic cats or dogs. The congresswoman previously collaborated with WCW to eliminate similar funding for painful pet experiments in the military’s 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Trump signed into law.
One group is actually fighting back: White Coat Waste Project.
They’ve exposed $20 BILLION in taxpayer funding for cruel, useless experiments—including bizarre transgender tests on animals and bat virus gain-of-function work in China.
Yes, really. pic.twitter.com/8cyf3Kr9fM
— Vigilant Fox
(@VigilantFox) February 13, 2026
In a December Fox Business interview, Sen. Rand Paul went as far as to say the NSF should be entirely shut down because of its reckless spending habits.
Sen. Joni Ernst has repeatedly teamed up with WCW to expose NSF’s wasteful spending, including an infamous study that involved putting shrimp on a treadmill.
If you want to put shrimp on a treadmill or turn mice transgender, do it on your own dime, not the taxpayers’.
This is exactly why we need @DOGE! pic.twitter.com/XUcSGf4aud
— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) March 7, 2025
On Thursday, it was reported that President Donald Trump plans to nominate Jim O’Neill, a vocal critic of similar animal abuses, to head the NSF. There may finally be hope for ending this taxpayer-funded nightmare.
O’Neill recently served as HHS Deputy Secretary and acting CDC Director.
Back in 2021, O’Neill publicly condemned WCW’s revelations about Dr. Anthony Fauci’s NIH-backed beagle experiments, where puppies had their vocal cords removed to silence their cries during toxic drug tests. O’Neill called it “horrible if true,” which it was.
“some of the dogs had their vocal cords removed so scientists could work without incessant barking.”
Horrible if true. https://t.co/ZuWz6tIjSG
— Jim O’Neill (@regardthefrost) October 23, 2021
The Gateway Pundit reached out to O’Neill for comment on the University of Chicago experiments and whether he would be open to stopping these tests and similar ones if confirmed. We did not receive a response as of early Friday morning, but we will update this article if one is provided.
The post EXPOSED: Taxpayer-Funded Horror at University of Chicago – NSF Pours Millions into Inducing Severe Strokes in Dogs Before Killing Them appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.