A leading primate researcher has been sanctioned by the United States Department of Health and Human Services for faking data in National Institutes of Health applications.
The fake data helped the researcher, Deepak Kaushal, secure $14,504,479 of taxpayer dollars in primate experimentation grants and is also connected to over $278,00,0000 in monkey testing grants from other NIH divisions, according to a review of the grants conducted by taxpayer watchdog White Coat Waste Project.
Kaushal runs the Southwest National Primate Research Center at Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio where 2,500 primates are being used for often painful and fatal animal testing. Approximately 1,000 of the animals being used in the experiments are baboons.
The taxpayer funded projects impacted by the fraud included experiments in which monkeys were infected with tuberculosis and SIV (the monkey version of HIV) and then killed and dissected.
White Coat Waste previously exposed the Southwest National Primate Research Center for violating federal transparency law.
Now, the facility has been sanctioned for the fake data, according to a notice from HHS.
In the notice, HHS reported that the Office of Research Integrity found that Kaushal engaged in “research misconduct” in work supported by US Public Health Service (PHS) funds — specifically Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The animal experimenter “engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly, and/or recklessly falsifying and fabricating the experimental methodology to demonstrate results obtained under different experimental conditions,” the ORI found.
A report from Retraction Watch found that the primate center took part in Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine tests.
“The Southwest NPRC at Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio has received about $3 million from the NIH to expand capacity by 10-20%. The centre currently holds 2,500 animals, mostly baboons, rhesus macaques and marmosets. Separately, Texas Biomedical is planning a new building to house 1,000 more monkeys, and funding most of the $13.5-million cost,” according to a July 2021 story in Nature.
Animals at the facility were also used to study Regeneron, a monoclonal antibody therapy for COVID-19.
On August 3, Texas Biomedical Research Institute vice president for communications Lisa Cruz confirmed to Retraction Watch that Kaushal will not be fired or demoted for his unethical behavior.
“Dr. Kaushal is an outstanding and transformative SNPRC director and the misconduct finding is not directly related to, and does not impact, his administrative leadership functions,” Cruz said. “The inquiry of Dr. Kaushal’s research program has been completed and mechanisms have been put in place to ensure that this cannot happen again. The Institute and the Office of Research Integrity will monitor his studies for the next year, per the agreement, and the Institute has implemented additional corrective actions and consequences for Dr. Kaushal.”
Cruz did not specify what the “corrective actions” or “consequences” would be.
Per ORI, Dr. Kaushal entered into a Voluntary Settlement Agreement which requires him to have his research supervised for a period of one year.
“It’s outrageous that the top white coat at one of the nation’s largest taxpayer-funded primate prisons can falsify data to steal millions of taxpayer dollars for abusive and wasteful monkey experiments and just receive a slap on the wrist from Uncle Sam,” Daniel López, the Research Manager at White Coat Waste Project told Timcast.
López continued, “Deepak Kaushal should be barred from ever receiving another red cent of taxpayers’ money and HHS should audit all of the Southwest National Primate Research Center’s grant applications and publications to determine how far this culture of waste, fraud and abuse has spread.”
As Timcast previously reported, Dr. Fauci and NIH are using an island off the coast of South Carolina to breed monkeys for use in horrific “maximum pain” animal experimentation.
Approximately 600 monkeys are taken from Morgan Island per year and shipped to some of the federal government’s most painful and cruel laboratories for animal research.
