As reported on January 10, Anthony Fauci’s institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is—once again—wasting taxpayer money and harming animals. This time, it’s trying to create transgender monkeys. PETA has discovered that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funded (to the tune of $205,562) a proposed experiment that will subject male rhesus macaques to feminizing hormone therapy to see whether that makes them more susceptible to HIV, purportedly to help transgender women. But rather than holding a proper clinical study with willing human patients that would yield relevant information, these experimenters have decided to use monkeys, who can’t become infected with HIV. It’s just bad science to suggest that dosing monkeys with feminizing medication makes them good stand-ins for humans.

This study will not help prevent or treat HIV and will not help transgender women.

Monkeys don’t get HIV, and after 40 years, hundreds of thousands of dead monkeys, billions of dollars, and no vaccines on the market, you’d think NIH would put funds into something that might actually work and could help humans. Right now, so little money is going to research on health issues for women (both cis and transgender) that throwing away more than $200,000 is unethical as well as cruel.

This is yet another pointless, wasteful monkey torture experiment, and it’s just as stupid as those done by NIH experimenter Elisabeth Murray, who brain-damages monkeys and then frightens them with plastic snakes and spiders. NIH and its institutes need to fund modern, animal-free research—such as organs-on-chips and artificial intelligence—and stop tormenting animals.

PETA has already asked Fauci to end HIV experiments on monkeys and instead use human-relevant, cutting-edge methods.

Joining our call to action only takes a minute using your phone or computer, so what are you waiting for? Get started now:

Tell Fauci to End This Junk Science

The post Fauci Funds Absurd Experiment to Try to Make Male Monkeys Transgender appeared first on PETA.

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