'Trans animals': The multimillion-dollar gender studies on rats and monkeys funded by taxpayers

The Trump administration recently suspended two grants to study trans hormone treatments in mice, valued at a total of $2.5 million allocated to Harvard.

The multimillion-dollar figure is mounted on an even larger one, estimated in hundreds of millions, and on a growing controversy that was born in a blog a year ago, climbed to Congress and jumped to the Oval Office: "$10M+ Wasted to Create Transgender Mice and Monkeys."

Under that title, the animal rights organization White Coat Waste Project (WCW) claimed to have uncovered multimillion-dollar spending of public money on "invasive surgeries and hormone therapies to mimic gender transitions" in mice, rats and large animals. It described these experiments as "painful and deadly."

One grant, for example, went to a study that used hormones to create "trans" mice and test how they reacted to the HIV vaccine. Another awarded $1.1 million to test on animals a drug used at sex parties. One more funded a project that proposes ways for fellow scientists to use rodents, non-human primates and other animals to put study the transgender population.

As VOZ was able to verify, several of those studies acknowledge that information is lacking on the effects of some drugs ingested by transgender people, such as possible harmful effects on fertility, problems with skeletal maturation and the development of breast cancer.

'$240 million in NIH grants for transgender animal experiments'

"Is this how you want your money spent?" interjected WCW in its piece with the results of its research. That same question was asked by Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, who months later invited the organization's vice president, Justin Goodman, to a session in Congress.

"Experiments we’ve uncovered range from the savage to the stupid," Goodman, accompanied by three beagles rescued from laboratories, said at a televised hearing that went viral: "Injecting puppies with cocaine, staging hamster fight clubs, putting dead turtles on treadmills."

"We’ve also recently identified over $240 million in NIH grants for transgender animal experiments," he added. Of that amount, $26 million had been given to work that was in progress at that very moment.

This money, Goodman said later, is "the floor, not the ceiling" because of a lack of information.

A disproved denial

In his speech to Congress earlier this month, Trump listed among instances of "appalling waste" detected by his administration some "$8 million for making mice transgender." "This is real," he said to laughter in Congress.

CNN deemed it false in an immediate verification of the speech, but rectified after the government doubled down. Listing each of the studies and their cost, the White House claimed that the "transgender experiments on mice" cost exactly $8,290,053.

The claim was true, CNN later said, but "needs context:" "The studies were meant to figure out how these treatments might affect the health of humans who take them, not for the purpose of making mice transgender."

The studies reviewed by VOZ and Goodman's testimony point out that that nuance is true, but also needs context: research such as that cited by Trump uses animals as a surrogate for humans in cases where turning to the former is quicker or safer than studying people. But the animal is never the target, just a surrogate for the human being.

In the studies in question, the researchers' ultimate purpose is to reach conclusions that will be useful for people who undergo transgender treatments. To that end, they expose the animal to the same hormones, in effect creating trans animals.

This is exemplified by a study linked by WCW that literally speaks of "trans" mice:

"To understand the effects of feminizing sex hormone therapy on vaccination, we propose to develop a mouse model of gender-affirming hormone therapy, assess its relevance to human medicine through singe-cell transcriptome studies, and test the immune responses of 'cis' vs. 'trans' mice to a HIV vaccine," the study reads.

'A great victory for taxpayers and animals!'

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) canceled the seven grants the president referenced. WCW celebrated the announcement at the beginning of March, adding in recent hours the cancellation of the two grants to Harvard: "This is a great victory for taxpayers and animals!"

"With these additional cuts, Trump and DOGE have now canceled nine transgender animal testing grants exposed by WCW worth nearly $10 million," they said, although they noted that several of the grants they investigated remain active.

The cancellations are part of a larger campaign of NIH and executive branch cuts coordinated by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Elon Musk.