A resurfaced congressional hearing featuring Lauren Boebert, former Anthony Fauci and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has reignited debate over taxpayer-funded fetal tissue research after witnesses alleged that Fauci's agency financed the overwhelming majority of National Institutes of Health experiments involving the implantation of human fetal tissue into laboratory animals.
The exchange, originally delivered during a February 2025 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, has spread widely across social media following the Trump administration's January 2026 decision to ban new NIH fetal tissue funding.
During the hearing, Boebert questioned White Coat Waste Project executive Justin Goodman about NIH-backed research programs involving aborted fetal tissue. Speaking from the committee dais, Boebert said: "We have also sent billions of taxpayer dollars to unaccountable labs in China and other foreign countries to implant aborted baby parts into lab animals."
She then asked Goodman directly: "Have you heard of that sort of research?"
Goodman responded: "Yeah. We did an analysis a few years ago showing that over 90 per cent of experiments using human foetal tissue and putting them in animals were funded by Fauci's NIAID."
The remark immediately became one of the most circulated moments from the hearing, particularly among conservative activists and anti-abortion groups that have long criticized NIH funding tied to fetal tissue research.
The debate centers on a category of federally funded biomedical studies that use tissue obtained from aborted fetuses to create so-called "humanized" animal models. Researchers argue the models are used to study immune diseases, HIV, vaccine responses and regenerative medicine. Critics, meanwhile, contend the research is ethically indefensible and insufficiently transparent.
Goodman expanded on his criticism of Fauci during the hearing, saying: "Dr Fauci ran NIAID from 1984 to 2022, and when he left at the end of 2022 it had a $6.5 billion budget." He added: "He was not just a paper pusher. He was personally involved in animal experimentation, experimenting on monkeys, giving them HIV-like viruses until the day he left NIH. He was the lead investigator on grants that were funded by taxpayers to do that."
The White Coat Waste Project says its conclusions were based on publicly available NIH grant data. According to WCW's published analysis, 16 of 17 active NIH-funded fetal tissue grants in 2024 involved animal experimentation.
The group reported the grants totaled approximately:
- $21.7 million in active funding during 2024
- 89% of NIH-funded fetal tissue studies involving animal testing
- Nearly 80% of NIH fetal tissue funding allegedly tied to NIAID grants
Among the most controversial experiments were studies involving "BLT mice," laboratory animals implanted with human bone marrow, liver and thymus tissue derived from aborted fetuses.
The controversy has also renewed attention on University of Pittsburgh and its affiliated Magee-Womens Hospital, both of which were previously scrutinized by anti-abortion activists and Republican lawmakers over federally funded tissue research programs.
According to testimony from David Daleiden before the Pennsylvania House Health Committee in 2021, fetal tissue obtained through affiliated medical procedures was allegedly used in experiments involving skin grafts on rodents. A research paper published in the journal Nature documented human hair growth on mice used in studies backed by NIAID grants.
The paper stated that all procedures were reviewed and approved through institutional ethics oversight systems and complied with NIH animal care regulations.
Federal policy on fetal tissue research has shifted repeatedly across administrations. During Trump's first term, the administration halted new federal fetal tissue contracts in 2019 and imposed tighter oversight requirements, significantly reducing NIH spending in the area. The Joe Biden administration reversed those restrictions in 2021 after pressure from medical research institutions, universities and scientific organizations that argued the work remained essential for certain biomedical studies.
