Don Corleone is out. St. Francis of Assisi is in.
The National Institutes of Health is morphing from Godfather – whose portrait allegedly hung over the desk of longtime National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci – to Good Shepherd under Director Jay Bhattacharya, the “fringe epidemiologist” who preached to his own church not to treat COVID-19 infection as sin.
Bhattacharya put an end to the gruesome puppy experiments approved by the previous regime, which especially dogged Fauci after he retired two years ago, while NIH is “reducing,” if not phasing out, other forms of animal research.
Animal welfare groups are swooning at the reversal under a Republican administration, with NIH over the past week prioritizing “human-based research technologies” that do not subject humans to testing and eliminating its last beagle lab, following animal testing phaseouts by the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency.
President Trump also signed an executive order Monday banning federal funding for gain-of-function research, which may have caused the COVID-19 pandemic from a lab leak in China and which Fauci denied funding under oath, causing more celebration.