A clumsy or automated search for any mention of "
trans" material in medical records might easily have flagged "transgenic" studies.
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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