Trump Decried Millions Spent 'Making Mice Transgender.' It Was Cancer and Asthma Research [View all]

Source: Rolling Stone

Even among the many lies and distortions in President Donald Trump‘s never-ending address to Congress on Tuesday evening, one claim stood out. The chief executive of the United States told the country that the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had uncovered an outrageous expenditure authorized by the previous administration: a whopping $8 million “for making mice transgender.”

The number, like so many offered up by oligarch Elon Musk‘s government-gutting pet project, was essentially pulled out of thin air. DOGE has been forced to delete many “receipts” of the supposed billions in wasteful spending it has identified because of absurd errors in its reporting — last month, for instance, it touted the cancelation of an $8 billion contract that was, in fact, worth $8 million.

As for the “transgender” mice, it’s possible that the Trump regime’s sweeping efforts to root out language associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion led them to health studies that involve “transgenic” mice, lab research mice that have been genetically altered to better model human disease response. They have been called a “revolutionary research resource” for medical advancements.

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Yet the White House doubled down on Trump’s line on Wednesday, sharing a government webpage that declared, in a slightly more nuanced phrasing: “Yes, Biden spent millions on transgender animal experiments.” As is typical of DOGE, the page tallies up spending in a completely misleading way in order to arrive at an arbitrary number. One line item, for more than $3 million, was research examining how “sex-specific inflammatory mechanisms controlled by hormones” may contribute to asthma, and whether estrogens account for a higher prevalence of the chronic lung disease in women. A different hormone study, priced at $1.2 million, indeed used “transgenic” — not transgender — mice. About $2.5 million went to a fertility study. Another project looked at how gender hormones affect the gut microbiome of mice. Of the highlighted research that does address transgender health, there’s a $300,000 analysis of breast cancer risk for female-to-male trans individuals taking testosterone. Again, the mice used for clinical purposes did not undergo gender transition.

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Read more: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-transgender-mice-medical-research-1235289439/

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If the Biden White House had made errors like these, it would have gotten a lot of coverage from mainstream media, 24/7 coverage from RW media.