Fact check: Is the US government spending millions on transgender monkeys?

As Elon Musk launches the Department of Government Efficiency to urge spending cuts, helium has highlighted examples of what helium considers waste.

Musk, the world’s richest person, amplified posts connected his X level that said the United States authorities funded probe connected “transgender” monkeys, cats connected treadmills and “alcoholic rats” sprayed with bobcat urine.

“Some of this worldly is not simply a discarded of money, but outright evil,” Musk wrote connected November 13.

“Your taxation dollars astatine ‘work’,” Musk said connected November 12 with a laughing emoji with tears.

Musk said helium wants the national authorities to chopped “at slightest $2 trillion”, oregon astir 30 percent of what the US authorities spent successful 2024. Trump didn’t specify a people magnitude for the radical led by Musk and erstwhile Republican statesmanlike campaigner Vivek Ramaswamy, but helium acceptable July 4, 2026, the 250th day of the Declaration of Independence, arsenic a deadline for identifying cuts. The section tin marque recommendations, but Congress has the eventual powerfulness connected spending decisions.

Many national probe projects Musk cited overlap with findings successful yearly “Festivus” reports astir authorities spending by Republican US Senator Rand Paul, who said Musk and Ramaswamy tin usage his reports arsenic “inspiration”.

Some projects agelong backmost decades. For example, 1 database connected X compiled by Dillon Loomis, big of the YouTube amusement Electrified, called retired Department of Agriculture recognition paper spending connected “concert tickets, tattoos, lingerie and car payments”. This came from a 2003 authorities audit.

Musk boosted different X station by The Redheaded Libertarian that said the authorities spent $4.5m “to spray alcoholic rats with bobcat urine” successful 2020.

Medical probe has agelong been a bipartisan people for criticism, Joshua Sewell of Taxpayers for Common Sense said.

“Whether tequila makes food angry, shrimp connected a treadmill are 2 projects that travel to mind,” Sewell said. “You comb done the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and different agencies, and determination are a batch of weird-sounding studies – astatine slightest superficially.”

Many complaints exclude the problems the probe is trying to address, which mightiness alteration however radical comprehend its value. In the lawsuit of these caller examples Musk cited, the wealth went mostly to probe and world institutions implicit respective years to survey animals to lick wellness problems successful humans.

Here’s a person look astatine the details down the projects shorthanded connected societal media:

The $33m for ‘transgender monkey’ research? This distorts spending connected HIV study

Loomis claimed $33.2m was spent connected “transgender monkey research”. That is false. It conflates spending connected a monkey laboratory probe tract with a azygous study.

Paul’s 2023 study said the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases spent $477,121 connected a “transgender monkey study”.

The NIH awarded 3 projects $477,121 starting successful 2020 for probe that included administering feminising hormone therapy to monkeys to survey whether the medicine makes the monkeys much susceptible to HIV. The survey besides examined however hormone therapy affected the monkeys’ effect to HIV treatments.

Transgender women are astatine precocious hazard of contracting HIV and relationship for disproportionate numbers of caller infections astir the world, the World Health Organization has said.

The $33.2m spending fig refers to a monkey colony, but that’s not specifically for transgender research. The Post and Courier, a Charleston, South Carolina, newspaper, reported successful 2023 that the monkey tract has existed since the 1970s and is location to astir 3,500 rhesus monkeys that are sent to researchers moving connected vaccines and aesculapian treatments.

The monkey tract was successful the quality successful November due to the fact that 43 of its monkeys escaped. As of this writing, the bulk had been recovered.

The $4.5m successful 2020 for ‘alcoholic rats’ and bobcat urine? That’s wrong.

The Redheaded Libertarian account’s station claims the authorities spent $4.5m successful 2020 to “spray alcoholic rats with bobcat urine”. That was a existent study, but it was not the lone happening the grants, which were spent implicit respective years, funded.

Paul’s 2020 Festivus study says researchers utilized $4.575m successful grants from the NIH and the Department of Veterans Affairs “to spray alcoholic rats with bobcat urine”.

The underlying probe aimed to survey alcoholism successful humans with post-traumatic accent disorder. The wealth went to Louisiana State University’s (LSU’s) Health Sciences Center to survey the chemic processes down alcoholism, astir of it funded implicit respective years by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

An LSU Health New Orleans spokesperson said the grants totalled astir $5.6m from 2014 to 2024. The extremity of the enactment is to amended attraction for radical who endure from post-traumatic accent upset (PTSD) and intoxicant usage disorder. This enactment has led to the find of encephalon changes that whitethorn thrust excessive intoxicant usage successful radical diagnosed with PTSD.

One survey examined post-traumatic accent avoidance successful rats erstwhile exposed to predator odour (bobcat urine) to amended recognize however to dainty PTSD successful humans. The predator odour causes a trauma effect successful the rats, simulating trauma responses successful humans.

The $2.7m to survey cats connected a treadmill? Researchers sought quality spinal cord therapies

The Redheaded Libertarian relationship mentioned $2.7m for “studying cats connected a treadmill”. The magnitude is correct, but it near retired the research’s volition of trying to recognize spinal cord therapies for humans.

The NIH gave astir $2.7m successful national backing from 2018 to 2021 to a task studying the effects of spinal cord injuries connected cats’ walking patterns.

Researchers successful the US, Sweden and Russia collaborated connected the probe until it ended successful 2022.

According to a task summary, the researchers studied neural processes progressive successful a communal attraction for spinal cord injuries. The project’s extremity was providing “a technological ground for betterment of [epidural spinal cord]-stimulation therapies” to amended mobility successful humans.

Researchers performed country connected cats for the study, removing sections of their spinal cords. In respective studies, researchers observed however the cats with severed spinal cords walked connected treadmills.

In 1 survey of cats successful Russia, researchers recovered it was easier to stimulate guardant question implicit backward question erstwhile utilizing epidural spinal cord stimulation connected the cats. Another survey utilized transdermal stimulation, a antithetic therapy, and recovered the attack utile for “investigating caller approaches of neurorehabilitation aft spinal cord and encephalon wounded and diseases”.

The $12m for monkeys connected meth? Researchers studied sleep

The Redheaded Libertarian’s station said the authorities spent a “portion of $12M to survey monkeys connected meth”. That was 1 of dozens of studies funded by National Institute connected Drug Abuse grants to survey ways to dainty and forestall cause addiction.

Paul’s 2023 study highlighted that study, which progressive giving methamphetamine to monkeys to survey the drug’s effects connected slumber and insomnia.

The survey lists 4 NIH grants arsenic its backing source. The backing from those grants implicit much than 2 decades totals adjacent to $12m, but the grants person supported much than 1 study.

One of those grants has funded a task researching benzodiazepine usage successful rhesus monkeys since 1998. The task has received national backing astir each twelvemonth that has totalled much than $7m arsenic of 2024. Researchers person published dozens of studies connected to that assistance funding, according to a task summary connected the NIH website.

Portion of ‘$12m’ to survey canine rectal somesthesia is unverified

The Redheaded Libertarian station said “a information of $12M went to survey canine rectal temperatures”. A researcher said the “portion” amounted to borrowing a camera for 1 day.

Paul’s study said the Agriculture Department (USDA) awarded an chartless sum of wealth to Southern Illinois University to survey “dog rectal temperatures”.

The 2019 survey recovered grounds that contradicted the fashionable content that dogs with darker fur acquisition greater thermal alteration erstwhile exposed to sunlight than dogs with lighter fur due to the fact that their interior temperatures adjusted astatine the aforesaid rate. Researchers measured rectal, gastrointestinal and aboveground temperatures.

A condemnation successful the survey says it was partially supported by a USDA grant. One researcher, Erin Perry, told PolitiFact that the USDA backing acknowledgement was required due to the fact that the survey utilized a thermal camera purchased with a USDA assistance for an unrelated task and lent to the canine task for 1 day. She said nary authorities backing was utilized for the canine study.

There was a quality transportation to this study. Perry said heatstroke is the starring origin of operational- oregon training-related deaths successful dogs utilized for military, instrumentality enforcement, and hunt and rescue purposes.

Experts connected aesculapian probe support the work

Some targeted researchers person taken disapproval of their projects with a chuckle. Robert Kraut, prof emeritus astatine Carnegie Mellon University, studied the improvement of quality facial expressions, which helium said was 1 of the archetypal published experiments “in what would yet go evolutionary psychology”. But successful 1980, Senator William Proxmire awarded the National Institute for Mental Health a Golden Fleece Award for backing the research. Proxmire gave Golden Fleece Awards to nationalist officials lingua successful feature for allegedly squandering nationalist money.

Kraut wrote that helium enactment it connected a T-shirt.

“Although my enactment was not astir arsenic sexy arsenic the probe connected people relationships successful Peruvian brothels, conducted by an earlier Golden Fleece Award victor [van den Berghe and Primov, 1979], it did get media attention,” Kraut wrote. “This whitethorn person been the archetypal clip that non-specialists, but for my woman and mother, had ever work 1 of my papers, and I gloried successful the little media attention.”

Leaders from the American Psychological Association and the Consortium of Social Science Associations wrote successful a 2014 effort that politicians who onslaught specified projects are overlooking research’s worth for solving quality problems.

Research related to the venom of the Gila monster, a lizard, whitethorn erstwhile person sounded fantastical. But it has a real-world impact.

In the 1990s, researchers studied a hormone successful Gila monster venom that helps the lizard modulate its humor sweetener during hibernation, KFF, a US wellness argumentation organisation, wrote. Researchers past created a synthetic mentation of the hormone, which led to a caller people of drugs, including Ozempic, which the Food and Drug Administration approved to dainty diabetes but which has go fashionable arsenic an off-label weight-loss drug.

“The Gila monster’s venom is not contiguous successful those drugs,” KFF wrote.