Fauci agency blasted for trans monkey study
The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) gave $205,000 to researchers for HIV study
US corona czar Dr. Anthony Fauci's agency awarded over $200,000 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic to an experiment injecting male monkeys with female hormones, in a bid to find out why trans women have higher rates of HIV.
Fauci's department, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, awarded $205,562 in funding to Scripps Research last month to inject male monkeys with female hormones. Scientists plan to monitor how the hormones impact the males' immune systems, testing the hypothesis that feminizing hormones negatively affect trans women's immune systems and thus increase their likelihood of becoming HIV positive.
The project received NIAID funding last year but began a year earlier, in December 2020. Fauci has been linked to research injecting monkeys with HIV dating back to the mid-1980s. His agency has contracted to acquire some 500 of the animals annually from an island in South Carolina where they are bred specifically for US government research at an annual cost of millions, according to government documents published by campaign group White Coat Waste.
No parallel research injecting female monkeys with male hormones is being conducted - and accordingly, trans men are entirely missing from the Centers for Disease Control's HIV factsheet, an odd oversight but one that has been justified by pointing out the low rate of infection among that population. Trans men contract HIV at almost the same rate as biological women - 3% vs 4%, respectively - while 19% of trans women are HIV-positive.
Neuroscientist with animal rights advocacy group PETA Katherine Roe was not impressed by the experiment, arguing that monkeys cannot even contract HIV and the testing thus has no value beyond “pointless, wasteful monkey torture.” Instead, she said, monkeys contract the milder and more survivable SIV - simian immunodeficiency virus.
The experiment has brought Fauci once again under fire from animal rights groups, who have already heavily criticized him for horrific beagle experiments his agency was found to have funded, including infecting dogs with heartworm only to euthanize them afterwards.
Fauci's department, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, awarded $205,562 in funding to Scripps Research last month to inject male monkeys with female hormones. Scientists plan to monitor how the hormones impact the males' immune systems, testing the hypothesis that feminizing hormones negatively affect trans women's immune systems and thus increase their likelihood of becoming HIV positive.
The project received NIAID funding last year but began a year earlier, in December 2020. Fauci has been linked to research injecting monkeys with HIV dating back to the mid-1980s. His agency has contracted to acquire some 500 of the animals annually from an island in South Carolina where they are bred specifically for US government research at an annual cost of millions, according to government documents published by campaign group White Coat Waste.
No parallel research injecting female monkeys with male hormones is being conducted - and accordingly, trans men are entirely missing from the Centers for Disease Control's HIV factsheet, an odd oversight but one that has been justified by pointing out the low rate of infection among that population. Trans men contract HIV at almost the same rate as biological women - 3% vs 4%, respectively - while 19% of trans women are HIV-positive.
Neuroscientist with animal rights advocacy group PETA Katherine Roe was not impressed by the experiment, arguing that monkeys cannot even contract HIV and the testing thus has no value beyond “pointless, wasteful monkey torture.” Instead, she said, monkeys contract the milder and more survivable SIV - simian immunodeficiency virus.
The experiment has brought Fauci once again under fire from animal rights groups, who have already heavily criticized him for horrific beagle experiments his agency was found to have funded, including infecting dogs with heartworm only to euthanize them afterwards.