390: Did You Know You Are Being Forced To Pay $20 Billion For Animal Experiments? -with Justin Goodman from the White Coat Waste Project

Brian Nichols  
Instead of focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show.

There, folks, Brian Nichols here on The Brian Nichols Show. Thank you for joining us. On Of course, another fun filled episode. I am your humble host. And today, you're joined from the white coat waste project. Yes, they've been making a big name for themselves. Justin Goodman. Welcome to the program.

Justin Goodman  
Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Brian Nichols  
Absolutely. Justin, thanks for joining the program. And number one, you guys have been fighting the good fight raising up government waste across the board specifically, as it pertains to focusing on medical experiments on animals. I can't believe this is a conversation we're having today in 2021 of all things, the fact that this is still something that we're seeing just blows me away. But before we get there, I'm putting the cart before the horse, Sir, let's go ahead. Introduce yourself to the audience. Justin, who are you in? What is the white coat waste project?

Justin Goodman  
Sure. I'm Justin Goodman. I'm the Vice President of advocacy and public policy at White Coat waste project and we are a taxpayer watchdog group dedicated specifically to ending taxpayer funded animal experimentation which costs us about 20 US taxpayers about $20 billion a year. These experiments ranged from the stupid like putting shrimp on treadmills to the sadistic, like giving dogs heart attacks, and everything in between. And our mission is to, we'd like to call it use an acronym fed, find, expose and defund taxpayer funded animal testing.

Brian Nichols  
Find expose defund. So let's start into the fine. So obviously, we're seeing right now a lot of things that we're finding, what are we finding in your world? Justin, what are you seeing in terms of specific issues that you're raising up? And obviously everybody's saying, Brian, we know, we know what the answer is. It's the Fauci stuff, right, the Beagle gate. But there's more than just what Fauci has done. And you've really helped raise up a lot of that.

Justin Goodman  
Yeah, I'm, you know, since our campaign started back in 2016, we've exposed the abuse of dogs, cats and primates in horrible experiments at the Department of Veterans Affairs. We've ended 80% of the dog testing at the VA since then, and did a lot of the cat testing and primate testing as well. They're actually on a path to phase all that stuff out by 2025. As a result of legislation, we got passed bipartisan legislation. We ended nicotine addiction experiments on monkeys that were happening at the FDA and cost us five and a half million dollars. We shut down the government's largest cat experimentation lab that was being run by the USDA in that case, this had been going on for something like 30 years, USDA employees, among other things would fly over to China. Go to these wet markets that everyone's been hearing about over the last couple years. These filthy inhumane wet markets purchasing cat and dog meat, flying it back to the United States and their carry on luggage and then force feeding kittens dog and cat meat from Chinese wet markets and other markets around the world. We call that campaign the kitten cannibalism campaign and after international outrage about that that lab got shut down. So certainly yes, Beagle gate. Fauci dogs is top of mind right now, for us and for a lot of other people, thank goodness. But we've been doing this a long time. And it made a lot of headway. One of the other things we're very proud of.

Brian Nichols  
We're having this conversation about cannibalism. Like, oh, sorry. Sorry. We had an issue there. Technical. I know we were I confess to you before we got started Justin and Audience Yeah, I'm in my not normal studio. You see that at my office right now? I'm sorry. I was just astonished at the kitten cannibals. We didn't need to cut you off there just in the fact that that's something that our taxpayer dollars, were not only going towards, but had been funding for a number of years now.

Justin Goodman  
Yeah, I mean, those experiments were going on in various iterations for about 30 years and cost us $22 million. You know, what surprises a lot of people is that? You know, we see things like I know on my social media feeds, for example, you see a lot of things about cosmetics testing, for example, on animals. That's virtually non existent. Now, thanks to the good work of groups over the last several decades, testing on animals for cosmetics. It's not happening in the US anymore. It's barely happening around the world that China is a bit of a problem in that area, but it's not really happening anywhere else. The biggest culprit when it comes to taxpayer funding when it comes to animal testing is the federal government. They're the market maker for this again, $20 billion a year is being spent on these experiments that a majority of taxpayers oppose. So not only is this happening on taxpayers dime, we're being forced to pay for something we don't want to and anyone who's skeptical of government spending waste, and government overreach and other areas should be turning their attention to this just as well.

Brian Nichols  
I like that you, you mentioned that the federal government is the reason that this is an issue and we hear your cat protesting as well in the background, I don't worry, my cats would be two hours at home. And I love the way that you guys have framed this over on your website for the white coat waste project. And I'm going to go ahead and quickly share my screen here so the audience can see, because what we talked about in sales, is helping solve problems. And the way that you've identified this is the problem. The vast majority of wasteful and cruel animal experimentation is paid for, as we just said, with taxpayer money. And I still couldn't believe that $20 billion insane, and then you go through the solution, and how you do it. So we've seen the problem. And we see the solution, raising up the awareness. And you said it was fed, fine, expose and defund. So we found the problems. Now we're exposing the problems like kitten cannibalism, how do we defund it? Now, you mentioned some of the wins, is that by influencing legislators, is that by having people raise awareness and do grassroots campaigns? Or is there something more beyond just that?

Justin Goodman  
It's all of the above and more. So we have a grassroots army of about 3 million people across the country who do various things to support the organization, whether it's taking action, by writing Congress, making phone calls to Congress, posting on social media donating whatever the case may be, there's millions of people out there supporting these campaigns who are putting pressure on legislators, I'm a lobbyist on white coats, lobbyists. So I'm also working with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill, educating them about these issues, and then helping determine what the plan of action needs to be, you know, identifying these problems and helping come up with solutions. And we've been very grateful to have support on both sides of the aisle, you know, far left, far right, and everyone in between, in terms of legislators who are willing to, you know, put their name on letters and legislation to crack down on government waste on animal abuse. So it's really a little bit of everything.

Brian Nichols  
Justin, let's go back to the beginning of where really, people probably have actively had you guys enter into the collective consciousness of what's been going on. And it's really come to the precipice here of what's happened over the past two years. And that is the combination of not only Dr. Anthony Fauci in his response, as you know, the head of the NIH to really just do this top down approach to a government response to COVID-19. But also now we're starting to find all the other things as we were mentioning, Beagle gate has really become the number one thing that brought I think you to my world as well. So let's kind of go back to the beginning, though, because you actually did more than that you've actually helped dig behind the scenes in terms of the Wuhan Institute of virology. And our funding there. Could you dig into that some more? Sure. Yeah. So

Justin Goodman  
Beagle gate is certainly not our first rodeo with Anthony Fauci. We've been, you know, following his work for a long time and his role at the NIH for a long time, because he has the second the NIH has a $40 billion budget, about half of that is spent on animal testing. But Anthony Fauci his division Nyad at the National Institutes of Health, has the second largest budget within the NIH, about $6 billion. And about half of that maybe more is going to animal testing and really horrible things like that we call maximum pain experiments where they're giving animals Ebola, exposing them to anthrax, other infectious diseases, and then withholding pain relief, even though these things are killing them quickly, in some cases, slowly in other cases, so really nasty stuff happening. We've been paying attention to for a long time. But one thing that we caught onto in late 2019 and exposed in early 2020, was that Fauci is Division at the NIH had sent $600,000 of a $3.7 million grant to the Wuhan Institute of neurology for dangerous Coronavirus experiments on animals that we now know to be gain of function. These you know, people may have heard the term gain of function now. These experiments were their supercharging wild Corona viruses and making them more infectious to humans and more transmissible between humans. And this is work that the NIH has been funding for years at the Wuhan Institute of neurology through a intermediary here in the United States. So in April 2020, we were the first ones to link the the National Institutes of Health here in the United States to funding the lab at the Wuhan Institute of neurology, which now many people believe in the you know, scientists intelligence experts believe may have caused the pandemic through a lab leak.

Brian Nichols  
Well, Justin, didn't you get the memo? If you brought that theory up in the beginning of the pandemic, not only were you labeled a conspiracy theorist, but also you were racist, so I mean, I'm surprised You You are even having a conversation with me because you haven't been deep platformed at this point, it's it's amazing that you guys are still functioning.

Justin Goodman  
Yeah, we haven't been canceled yet. I mean, certainly, in the early days of the pandemic, when the the lab leak was still seen as a conspiracy theory by a lot of people who have now done a 180. You know, there was a Washington Post column that said it was nonsense and call those conspiracy theorists. And we heard that a lot from the establishment media and the center on the left, unfortunately. And, you know, ultimately, I think history is going to show that all of that politicizing of COVID origins really set us back in determining how this whole thing started. Because it took over a year for, you know, certainly politicians on the left and media on the left to come around to the idea that, you know, we they've tested 80,000 animals in China, not a single one carries the Coronavirus, COVID-19, the specific one that caused the pandemic, yet we have a laboratory here in the center of Wuhan, where the where the, where the pandemic started. That was manipulating Corona viruses that were very genetically similar to the one that we now have caught, you know, wreaking havoc on our public health and economy. So again, I It's, no one knows what caused the pandemic we might not ever know. But to say that the lab leak is a conspiracy theory, and be dismissed it just because people like Donald Trump, who some people, you know, vehemently disliked, were promoting it has really done damage to our ability to get to the bottom of COVID-19 and how it started.

Brian Nichols  
Yeah, and then fast forward to I mean, really were where everybody got mad. It wasn't the possible leak of a very contagious virus due to animal testing, that was likely funded by American taxpayer dollars at the behest of one Anthony Fauci. But no what what got people mad, Justin? It was it was what they were doing to dogs. And it speaks to, I think more of us and our priorities, in terms of, you know, where we are as a society right now and Ranking Things by hey, if that's what it makes people get upset at what's happening, so be it. So let's look at Beagle gate specifically, because that's really, I think, where the national attention did focus and one of the things that not only kind of caught me off guard, but I think it's gonna catch a lot of people off guard if they didn't know this, is that this isn't just isolated to random places across the world, but it's actually happening in our backyard. No. Yeah,

Justin Goodman  
that's right. So Beagle gate is the kind of trending hashtag that we coined and then when caught like wildfire in social media, which we're very grateful for, to refer to a series of experiments funded by Anthony Fauci his division at the National Institutes of Health. We the first one we exposed in 2016, was happening inside Fauci his own lab here in I'm in DC, but this was happening in Maryland, so right outside of the beltway, and those experiments involved purchasing beagles and strapping capsules full of infected flies sandflies to these beagles, to cause them sores and lesions and ultimately killed the dogs. Unfortunately, that was part of a pattern of punishing puppy abuse that we've now documented from Maryland, to a lab in Georgia where the NIH is currently finding experiments that involve infecting dogs with, infesting dogs with flies again, and testing experimental drugs on them. To a lab in California, where they were forced feeding dogs, experimental drugs, they cut out their vocal cords, so they can't bark in the laboratory. And then they they killed them. And the most two recent examples we exposed involved, infesting dogs with both ticks and heartworms and other horrible experiments in Iowa and Kansas. So this is really an international scandal that we've been documenting for years. And you know, what this comes down to in terms of it really catching fire, and grabbing the attention of people across the country and across the world is and you say in your, in your intro here on the program is you have to meet people where they're at. And, unfortunately, you know, the the Wuhan story, while it was alarming to us and troubling to us, mice and bats don't provoke the same reaction from people that dogs do. We're a nation of dog lovers. And we always keep that in mind. Because you know, that's the gateway drug for us as dogs and cats and people and at the animals who people can relate to, that brings them into the fold and then we can talk to them about what's happening to Wuhan, or putting amphibious fish on a treadmill or whatever, you know, the other types of cruelty and nonsense that we expose. But dogs dogs are the secret sauce.

Brian Nichols  
I challenge, okay, we have way too many really talented people in the greater Liberty world for this not to happen. So I challenge this to find someone who can like do a short video, you know, a little two minute video of the dog's journey, you know, a happy puppy being born, and then Dr. Anthony Fauci adopting that puppy and that puppy all of a sudden being brought to a lab and just show that puppy sad, sad story that would hit so many people because we all watch the movies, right? We all watched Air Bud, we all watched Homeward Bound and cried when shadow was stuck in the mud. Hopefully, it's not a spoiler alert to anybody. Because, you know, that's movies like, older than me, I think at this point. So we all have the story that the animal stories specifically, it's those dogs stories that do connect with us. And I think that right there, to your point, Justin is exactly why this is now entering into the purview. And as you mentioned, meeting people where they're at on this very top of mind issue. And hey, it's an issue that people really do care about, because it's our furry friends, we all see. I mean, my mother in law just had to put down one of their dogs and it breaks your heart because they become part of the family. And you can't imagine someone doing something so cruel, so heinous. And just say, hey, it's in the name of science, Justin, it's in the name of progress. That's all scary. No.

Justin Goodman  
Yeah, I mean, and that's, you know, that's what we've seen at the NIH for years is them abusing their authority to justify doing these types of horrible things to dogs, cats, monkeys and other other animals and, you know, part of our our organization's name, it's, you know, white coat referring to the experimenters and then waste, and which we haven't really even talked about yet. But, you know, the part of the the core message for us is that not only is the stuff incredibly cruel, it's wasteful. The NIH itself admits that 95% of drugs and treatments that are tested on animals go on and pass animal tests fail in humans, because they don't work or dangerous. The FDA says something similar, the DoD says something similar. So not only is this this experimentation inhumane, it's an incredible waste of tax dollars. So it's a horrible, we get a horrible return on investment, and taxpayers shouldn't be forced to foot the bill for that. And that's part of you know, in terms of meet people where they're at for a long time, the the movement to end animal experimentation was focused only on the cruelty of it. And, unfortunately, that left out a lot of people who resonate with the government spending and the government's role in this problem creating the problem. So what why co wasted was show that, again, the government is the, you know, big government is the problem here, government subsidizing science is the problem in this case, because they don't care that there's no return on investment. They don't care that they don't have any incentive to, to innovate. And as a result, they're stuck in the, you know, using 16th century research methods in the 21st century world.

Brian Nichols  
And yet, Justin, we're told to trust the science and if you don't trust the science, if you don't trust one, Anthony Fauci, well, then you're just not trusting science across the board. And I think right now, a lot of people are starting to question the overall narrative is, is science, the actual science? Or do we have a science of the government bureaucrats and then the science of the actual scientists out there? Who are testing hypotheses trying to figure out not just what's the truth based on what I'm supposed to be presenting, but actually, what is the actual science out there? What is the actual truth and we're seeing a very big split. I've had this conversation many a time with Dr. Adrian bridge on the show where he talks about people in academia who they are Liberty lovers, but they are afraid to speak that ugly F word freedom for the fear of being ostracized by their co workers by being cast away by their their peers. That's insane, that you have some who are supposed to be the experts, the brightest, the best in our society, who have been so shun so terrified to not even want to speak out because of that fear, right, the other F word. And I think right there is where we need to start to focus and address is that it's, it's not time to be afraid anymore. Like, it's Kevin McAllister, and hold alone, where he comes up and read the bed. He goes, I'm not afraid anymore. And he runs outside and then the old man with the shovels right there, and he screams and I'm back in the house. No, but that's the point. It's time for us to say we're not afraid anymore. And we have to stand up and say this is wrong. And it's time for our tax dollars to stop going towards this. But then I know the pushback. I'm a sales guy here. We have objections pop up, and they're gonna say, Well, what are we going to do? How are we going to fund this and then to your point 95% of the animal tests fail human trials anyways, what are we doing? Like? And then this is an awful question to even feel like I have to ask, what's the point of this? Like, unless there's just, hey, this is a means for us to disseminate taxpayer dollars and animals are just a means to an end. I mean, is it really that black and white?

Justin Goodman  
Unfortunately, yes. I mean, if you ask me, at least, I mean, listen at $20 billion means animal testing is big business. And, you know, the grants that go to the universities, they're taking maybe a quarter or a third of the grant right off the top for overhead. The rest is,

Brian Nichols  
nothing is big business, though. Hold on that line is a that is a winner right there. Write it down. Yeah. If you don't, yeah, you don't think about $20 billion.

Justin Goodman  
It's cynical. But it's, it's, it's the reality of it. I mean, there's the companies that make the cages and make the and make the food and transport them to the trucking companies that transport the animals and the companies that breed the dogs by the 1000s, to sell to the NIH, and to other laboratories for abuse in these experiments that are funded by taxpayers. So the colleges and universities are some of the loudest advocates for this, because they're getting the most money for it. And again, there's no incentive for them to innovate, because the second you solve a problem, the NIH is going to fund it anymore. So you have every incentive to continue tinkering and not solve the problem that you're looking at. And people who speak out about this are ostracized. Unfortunately, that's what happens because the status quo has been animal testing is, you know, the gold standard for so long, despite the fact that all the evidence points to the contrary. Good science, you know, you're talking about science and what what is what is science and what counts as science and who should we trust? Good science follows the conclusions wherever they go, even if they're inconvenient. And the science, in this case, the site of the public health science and biomedical science, the science in this case, leads us to the conclusion that animal experimentation is incredibly wasteful and not worthy of our tax dollars. However, you have people like Anthony Fauci abusing their authority, Francis Collins, the head of the outgoing head of the NIH, abusing their authority, and actually lying to people and telling them that you're going to die, your grandma is going to die, your kids are going to get sick if we don't abuse dogs, which is the furthest possible thing that could be from the truth. But if you challenge that you're deemed as an anti science radical, and there are so many scientists in the community that have spoken up and found themselves on the receiving end of not having papers published, being rejected from conferences, and being ostracized in other ways. But that's changing, it's changing, because the science is so overwhelming that this stuff is wasteful. And you have seen some progress at agencies acknowledging that are looking to do things in a better way. But our challenge is, you know, as a Liberty group, we're not saying that we should ban anything. Our challenge to the to the government and to the animal experimenters is find your own funding. If your problem is so important, and your research is so promising, surely the Gates Foundation, or some other big foundation that doles out billions of dollars a year in grants would be interested in funding your program, or your project that is going to save people's lives. But the fact is, is that putting fish on a treadmill is not going to save anyone's life. And no one besides his Uncle Sam is going to pay for something like that.

Brian Nichols  
Ain't that the truth. And you one of the lines, you said there was just gold the second, you solve the problem, the funding stops. And I've used this example a million times. But it's just again, it's too perfect. It's the scene in the office where Oscar is trying to explain to Michael why they need to spend the money that they have leftover. So next year, corporate will continue to give them the same amount of money because there is no incentive in this world where you want to have the problem solved because then that spigot will turn off. So you have to constantly be validating why your job exists. And in the government world, it's just to keep the problem just existing, but maybe fixing it a little bit my like minute steps each day versus you know, when you're a sales guy and you're out and you're trying to sell a solution is because you're trying to solve the problem as you're trying to make things better and objectively take that step moving forward. But I'm again, to your point, I think people are starting to wake up and thank God, Justin, because I think we're far past due a time where people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, these lifelong government bureaucrats who have faced no recourse whatsoever. It's time they face they're due. So with that being said, Justin, unfortunately, we're already short the time so we want make sure if people want to number one, go ahead and support the amazing organization that is the white coat weights project. We're going to go ahead and find And number two, where can folks go ahead and find you if they want continue the conversation.

Justin Goodman  
All right, our website is white coat waste.org. And you can visit at White Coat waste on Twitter, Facebook. And we're also we Instagram and YouTube on social media if you want to connect my personal Twitter is Justin, our Goodman, at Justin, our Goodman, if anyone wants to reach out to me and ask any other questions, and again, white coat waste.org is the place to go to our home base to get more information about what we're doing and get involved.

Brian Nichols  
Perfect and folks have up this will make it super easy for you to go to your podcast catcher. Click the artwork there and it'll bring you right to The Brian Nichols Show website where you can find today's episode, all of the links that were just mentioned there by Justin as well as the transcription for today's episode. Oh, and you can find all 400 Plus episodes of The Brian Nichols Show. But with that being said, thank you Justin for joining us on today's episode, The Brian Nichols Show.

Justin Goodman  
Thank you Brian.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai