Kremlin cat lab, Monkey Island & drugged beagles… Inside cruel US-funded labs that Trump wants to axe after Covid ‘leak’

DONALD Trump is set to axe "stupid spending" on cruel lab tests in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic - and save millions.

The US government has dished out cash to a Kremlin-run lab, Chinese labs linked to the military, and Monkey Island - where 3,000 monkeys are bred for experiments with Covid and other viruses.

In 2022 and 2023, $3.6million of taxpayer cash was spent on a project to get monkeys hooked on cocaine and forcing them to gamble.

Another $5.2million was handed out to inject beagle puppies with cocaine.

And a firm under fire over the origins of Covid has received millions from the US government for risky virus experiments - including at a lab in Wuhan, China.

But Trump's incoming administration has signalled a crackdown on the funding of experiments.

Vivek Ramaswamy, who will head up the Department of Government Efficiency alongside Elon Musk, said funding for projects that do not benefit American citizens "needs to end next year".

He said: "If it doesn’t advance the interests of American citizens, we’re putting it on the chopping block.

"Amazingly, there are a number of programs whose authorisation from Congress has *already expired* yet $$$ still flows out the door.

"That needs to end next year."

Anthony Bellotti, the founder and president of the White Coat Waste Project, said they are "thrilled that Vivek and Elon are targeting stupid spending".

He added: "A growing majority of taxpayers... oppose wasteful, dangerous, and cruel animal experiments at home and abroad and they shouldn't be forced to foot the bill.

"DOGE can save billions of tax dollars and millions of animals by cutting the federal animal testing."

In 2022, White Coat Waste exposed how the US government handed out $770,000 for horrifying experiments on cats at the Kremlin-run Pavlov Institute.

Dozens of cats had their brains damaged, electrodes implanted into their spines, and were forced to walk on treadmills before slaughter.

Last year, the US government decided to cut all spending at animal labs in Russia - the first time a blanket ban has been introduced to cover an entire country.

'MONKEY ISLAND'

Meanwhile, on US soil near South Carolina, around 500 monkeys are taken from their home in Morgan Island - dubbed "Monkey Island" - and shipped to US labs for experiments, according to White Coat Waste investigators.

They say the monkeys face "extraordinarily painful experiments", and infected with the "most dangerous and deadly diseases known to man".

And the monkeys on Morgan Island are owned by a US government agency - the National Institutes of Health - and millions of taxpayer cash has been spent funding lab experiments using the animals.

In one government-funded experiment, 12 monkeys were injected with deadly Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever virus, White Coat Waste found.

They developed fever, lethargy, and haemorrhages before they were killed - even the monkeys who survived the initial infection. 

The monkeys were also injected with Ebola, Lassa virus and Nipah virus in other horror experiments.

The government spent more than $3.6million on tests where monkeys’ skulls are cracked open, horseradish and other toxins are injected into their brains.

They were addicted to cocaine and forced to gamble for water, the White Coat Waste investigation found.

Elsewhere, six-month-old beagle puppies were injected with cocaine in cruel government-funded experiments.

Using a special drug-injecting jacket, the puppies were repeatedly dosed with cocaine - along with an "experimental compound" - to see how the two drugs interacted.

At the end of the months-long ordeal, the hounds were either killed or "recycled" — meaning they were shipped off to be used in other experiments.

'WASTEFUL' SPENDING

In May, the US government suspended funding to the organisation at the centre of the storm over the origins of Covid.

EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based non-profit, has been under fire since the early days of the pandemic over its bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The group has faced scrutiny over whether Covid may have emerged from the research at the lab that was funded by the US government.

Justin Goodman, White Coat Waste's Vice President, said Trump has an "excellent track record" of cutting "wasteful" spending.

He cut a grant to National Institutes of Health in April 2020 that was funding EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Grants from US agencies, including National Institutes of Heath, make up most of EcoHealth Alliance's budget - which was about $14million in 2022.

Mr Goodman told The Sun: "Wasteful government spending... at the CCP-run Wuhan animal lab likely caused Covid, killed 20 million people and cost trillions of dollars.

"This is wasteful spending at its worst and Elon and Vivek have both criticized it.

"Trump’s new administration can, should, and I expect they swiftly will, cut funding for unaccountable animal labs in China.

"No one wants another Wuhan. Cutting government spending in animal labs in China and other adversarial nations is a no brainer that will save tax dollars, animals, and human lives.

"It's one of the easiest decisions the new administration can make."

Last year, a government investigation found EcoHealth Alliance had "mismanaged" grants in Wuhan.

It revealed a failure to monitor a risky coronavirus experiment, failure to obtain lab notebooks from the Wuhan lab and a delayed report describing research in the months before the pandemic.

In a letter, the US Department of Health and Human Services told EcoHealth Alliance that it was suspended from receiving government funds.

The funding suspension came after we revealed the government had dished out some $60million of public money to the organisation since the start of the pandemic - despite questions still raging over its work at the Wuhan lab.

And they have continued to collect and test hundreds of samples of bat coronaviruses since 2020 with US government funding.

EcoHealth Alliance has denied any wrongdoing over its experiments - and categorically denied any link to the origins of Covid.

The suspension of funding for the non-profit was welcomed by lawmakers investigating the origins of Covid.

Others slammed the suspension of funding - calling it "performative political posturing" and would harm biosecurity.

The FBI and the US Department of Energy believe Covid most likely leaked from a lab in China.

Dozens of experts, including the World Health Organisation, have also suggested Covid could have escaped from the Wuhan lab - and linked the outbreak to the project by EcoHealth Alliance.

And in September, former PM Boris Johnson said he also believes the pandemic was caused by a lab leak - and did not originate in a Wuhan wet market.

Experts claim the Wuhan Institute of Virology endangered the world by carrying out so-called "gain of function" experiments to engineer chimeric viruses.

This "souping up" involves extracting viruses from animals to engineer in a lab to make them more transmissible and deadly to humans.

Mr Goodman believes Trump and his administration could finally "get some real answers".

He said: "I think we’re finally going to get some real answers and accountability for what happened in Wuhan because Donald Trump and many of his cabinet picks who will have authority to investigate like Matt Gaetz, Mike Waltz, and RFK Jr have been on Team Lab Leak.

"Trump’s pick for National Security Advisor, Rep. Mike Waltz, was one of the first lawmakers in early 2020 to work with WCW to defund the Wuhan lab.

"[He] has been fighting for years to uncover the origin of Covid and working with us to pass legislation to cut funding for animal labs in China and other adversarial nations.

"John Ratcliffe, Trump’s former Director of National Intelligence who has been tapped to serve as CIA Director, believes a lab leak caused Covid and would have the authority to declassify intelligence on the pandemic’s origins that the Biden administration has refused to release."

The natural origins theory contends that Covid jumped from bats into humans through an "intermediate host".

But an animal host has not been found after nearly five years of searching.