The Creepy Reason Why Researchers Use Transgender Mice

And no, your tax dollars are not being wasted on Mouse Drag Queen Story Hour.

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Drag queen mice were created with Midjourney, not science.

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You have to hand it to Trump. If there’s a way to undermine science, he’ll find it. In just six weeks, he has weaponized science research as his anti-woke, anti-intellectual rallying cry.

His latest dystopian masterpiece is a doozy: mice are being turned trans on the taxpayer’s dime.

But are his claims valid? And why are we studying transgender mice? Let’s break it down.

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Must Love Rats: Why Scientists Use Rodents in Research

Rodents are the unsung heroes of biomedical science. According to the Foundation for Biomedical Research, about 95% of all lab animals are rats and mice.

So why do scientists use rats and mice in medical research? Why not, say, badgers? Or chihuahuas? Or — since we’re clearly in the business of conducting insane experiments — RFK jr? Someone might want to study the impact of brainworms on critical thinking. Just sayin.’

Studies use rodents because they are biologically, genetically, and behaviorally similar to humans. Mice share about 97.5% of their working DNA with us, which, given the state of modern politics, might make some of us uncomfortable and some of us really horny. (Apparently, “rodent men” — men who look like mice — are now considered hot. Don’t ask. Humans are weird.)

But it’s not just DNA that makes rodents ideal test subjects. Mice have a short life span and rapid reproductive cycle. These rodent features mean that multiple generations can be studied within a few years — ideal for understanding long-term genetic and disease progression.

Second, most lab mice are inbred, meaning they’re nearly genetically identical. This inbreeding ensures that experimental results aren’t thrown off by pesky variables like, say, whether the mice had different upbringings, diets, or went to private schools.

Third, mice are tiny, inexpensive, and easy to care for. Compare mice with, say, ornery chimpanzees, who are hungry, loud, mischievous, demanding, and will bite off your face if you mess with them. Not to mention, there is something undeniably disturbing about experimenting on creatures who have the same intelligence as a child.

And for those who will raise hell over animal welfare, yes, I get it. I don’t like the thought of experimenting on animals, either. I won’t even eat dead animals unless they are ugly. (I am an uglitarian - I eat fish only because…well, not cute.)

However, the Animal Welfare Act regulates the treatment of lab animals. It’s not a free-for-all mouse-torture fest. Researchers are legally required to minimize suffering. Unfortunately, we must test how diseases affect living organisms to improve human lives. Computers and petri dishes won’t cut it.

Besides, if rodent experiments disturb you, let’s imagine some alternatives. Nazis experimented on people, including children. If you eliminate animal testing, don’t think for a second that our fascist regime won’t find creative substitutes.

Without rodent research, we wouldn’t have vaccines, cancer treatments, or even basic knowledge of how the brain works. Rats and mice have contributed to life-saving breakthroughs in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and — ironically enough — the very heart disease medications Trump might need if he keeps up with his KFC diet.

So, now that we’ve established why mice are the go-to test subjects, let’s get to Trump’s malarky about transgender mice.

What Exactly Are Transgender Mice?

Transgender mice are mice that have been hormonally or surgically altered to mimic gender-affirming care.

However, Trump seems to think taxpayer money is going toward some secret Mouse Gender Factory. Not exactly. These mice don’t undergo a full-blown “mouse sex change.” In other words, researchers are not wielding tiny scalpels and even tinier hair transplants.

Instead, researchers manipulate the mice’s hormones (usually by giving them testosterone or estrogen) or remove their gonads (ovaries or testes) to mimic the effects of medical transition in humans. This allows scientists to study how hormone therapy impacts things like bone density, cancer risk, or heart health — in trans AND cisgender folks.

Why Study Transgender Mice vs. Regular Mice?

You might ask — why not just study regular mice? The reason is simple: Transgender mice create the real-world effects of hormone therapy in a controlled way. If scientists just studied regular male and female mice, they’d only get data on how hormones work naturally.

Unfortunately, a natural environment won’t give researchers further understanding of human bodies during medical transition or hormone therapy for non-trans reasons — menopause, prostate cancer, or endometriosis.

What do your Taxpayer Dollars Get for this Research?

First, the idea that taxpayers fund biomedical research is wildly misleading. A huge chunk of research funding comes from private foundations, pharmaceutical companies, universities, and international organizations — not just Uncle Sam’s wallet.

Even when taxpayer money is involved, it’s often in the form of grants from agencies like the NIH, which fund studies that improve public health, advance medical treatments, and, you know, literally save lives. These grants are highly competitive, rigorously reviewed, and meant to fund scientific breakthroughs, not some imaginary Mouse Drag Queen Story Hour.

Meanwhile, private funding sources—think the Gates Foundation, the American Cancer Society, and biotech firms—pour billions into research because they want results. Why? Money! They profit from this research.

So when Trump or others claim your hard-earned tax dollars are going toward gender-bending lab rodents, they’re either ignorantly oversimplifying or deliberately misleading people into thinking this is some frivolous, ideological spending spree.

Sure, some research gets taxpayer money. But when it does, it’s for things that actually benefit public health — not for running up a tab on mouse HRT.

Here are some of the benefits of studying transgender mice:

• Better treatments for transgender people. These studies help improve gender-affirming care, making sure hormone therapy is safe and effective.

• Breast & prostate cancer research for everyone. Hormones play a massive role in cancer development. Studying transgender mice helps researchers figure out how testosterone and estrogen affect tumor growth.

• Heart & bone health for women. Transgender individuals and postmenopausal women are at higher risk for osteoporosis and heart disease due to hormonal changes. These studies give doctors better data on how to prevent those risks.

Bottomline: studying transgender mice isn’t just about trans healthcare. It answers more significant medical questions that could save everyone’s life.

Trump’s Lies: A Breakdown of Research Dollar Waste

Last week, the Trump administration posted a memo on the official White House site listing all the government waste in transgender research. The total claimed savings was $8,290,053. Impressive.

Yeah, hold that thought.

At the top of the memo, they threw down the gauntlet: “The Fake News losers at CNN immediately tried to fact check it, but President Trump was right (as usual).”

Classy. Official government pages now sound like a snarky teenager wrote them during a drinking binge.

But CNN was not wrong. I cross-referenced the listed dollar waste in the White House memo with the NIH spending listed in NIH RePORTER. Here is a breakdown of each study and the supposed claimed savings.

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Study #1: “A Mouse Model to Test the Effects of Gender-affirming Hormone Therapy on HIV Vaccine-induced Immune Responses”

This research studies how hormone therapy affects the immune system’s response to vaccines. This research benefits anyone who gets vaccines, but especially transgender people, who may have different immune responses due to hormone therapy. Overall, his research could lead to safer, more effective vaccines for HIV and other diseases.

Claimed money saved on transgender research: $455,000
Actual money saved: $0

The funding amount for this study was $199,930. But those funds were allocated in 2024, with the budget’s end date set to April 2025. So we aren't getting that money back unless “BigBalls” has a time machine. (Nor would we want to. $199,930 is a tiny amount for vaccine research.)

Typically, unspent funds may be returned to the funding agency, but it’s not a simple task. Research grants usually have specific budget categories (personnel, equipment, travel, supplies, etc.). If unspent funds are moved from one category to another (e.g., from travel to equipment), this often requires approval and involves submitting a revised budget.

So sorry, clueless DOGE incels; cutting it in 2025 doesn’t magically recover funds. It just means future funding may be denied, potentially halting ongoing research or preventing similar studies from moving forward.

This ruse is a classic DOGE shell game: claim “savings” on money already out the door. It’s like canceling your Netflix subscription in January and bragging that you saved all the money you already paid for the previous year.

Study #2: “Reproductive Consequences of Steroid Hormone Administration”

This study investigates how testosterone impacts fertility and whether the effects are reversible — relevant not just for trans men but also for anyone taking testosterone therapy, including men with low testosterone or athletes using performance enhancers. This study could also help clarify whether fertility can bounce back after stopping testosterone, leading to better guidance for individuals on how to protect their future reproductive options.

Claimed money saved on transgender research: $2,500,000
Actual money saved: $0

The total funding was $532,185, so the $2,500,000 number is a big lie. This money was allocated for 2023. The budget ends in April 2025.

Study #3: “Gender-Affirming Testosterone Therapy on Breast Cancer Risk and Treatment Outcomes”

This study explores how testosterone therapy (TT) affects breast cancer risk and treatment outcomes in transmasculine individuals. Researchers are still unclear about how testosterone therapy impacts breast cancer. This research will help anyone affected by hormone-related cancers, including cisgender women and men.

Claimed money saved on transgender research: $299,940
Actual money saved: $0

They actually didn’t lie on the initial amount. Shocker! However, $299,940 was allocated for 2024. The budget’s end date is August 2025.

Study #4: “Microbiome mediated effects of gender affirming hormone therapy in mice”

This study examines how gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT) affects skeletal development in transgender people, specifically looking at how changes in the gut microbiome may influence bone health and maturation during hormone treatment. This research could also help postmenopausal women experiencing bone loss.

Claimed money saved on transgender research: $735,113
Actual money saved: $0

$735,113 was allocated for 2024, and the budget ends in May 2025. It's too bad future research has been canceled. Since women experience far more hormone-related bone loss than men, this research could have benefited them.

Study #5: “Androgen effects on the reproductive neuroendocrine axis”

This study investigates how high levels of exogenous androgens (like testosterone) affect the reproductive neuroendocrine system in transgender men and women.

This research will benefit transgender men undergoing testosterone therapy and women with hormonal conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), where high androgen levels also affect reproduction. In other words, they cut a study that could have helped women experiencing fertility issues.

Claimed money saved on transgender research: $1,200,000:
Actual money saved: $0

The total amount allocated to this study in 2025 was $581,671. They got the date right on this one but not the subject matter.

This study was misclassified as transgender mice. It was actually transgenic mice - genetically modified organisms used to study gene functions and disease mechanisms. Transgenic mice typically help researchers study conditions like cancer, diabetes, and neurological disorders. They have nothing to do with gender-affirming care.

My guess is they just searched for the word “trans” and then killed any study with those words. Idiots.

Study #6: “Gonadal hormones as mediators of sex and gender influences in asthma”

This study primarily investigates the hormonal mechanisms — specifically estrogen’s role — behind asthma disparities between cisgender and transgender women. It aims to determine how estrogen influences inflammatory processes in asthma. This study also helps postmenopausal women who experience a significant decrease in estrogen levels and are at an increased risk for asthma and bone loss.

Claimed money saved on transgender research: $3,100,000:
Actual money saved: $0

The total funding to help trans and cisgender women with asthma was $507,066. However, $507.066 was allocated for 2024. The budget ends in June 2025.

SAVING RESULTS:
Total claimed money saved on transgender research: $8,290,053.
Actual money saved: $0

DOGE has saved zero dollars by killing transgender research. What they have done is hurt anyone with cancer, autoimmune diseases, heart disease, bone density problems, and a host of other folks affected by hormonal issues.

Good job, Snoop DOGEY Dog. Time for a ketamine break.

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Hey DOGE Dumbasses, Science doesn’t care about your feelings toward gender.

These transgender mouse studies aren’t some woke science experiment gone rogue. They help researchers understand how hormones affect human health, including immune responses, fertility, and disease risks. The result is better treatments for conditions ranging from cancer to heart disease.

Here is the real issue: When Trump says “transgender,” he means people and how they define the social construct known as gender. But when researchers say “transgender,” they’re talking about biology, not identity.

In science, transgender mice are those that have been hormonally or surgically altered to mimic aspects of human medical transition. These mice don’t have an internal sense of gender. They don’t have gender identities at all. What they do have is biological responses to hormones — which scientists study to improve treatments for hormone-related conditions like osteoporosis, heart disease, and cancer.

Here’s the trick: Trump and his DOGE goons are intentionally collapsing these meanings. They want you to picture NIH scientists painting tiny mouse nails and funding mouse dragqueen shows. In other words, he is invoking the culture war boogeyman.

In reality, these studies are about saving lives — cisgender and transgender alike. But by hijacking the word transgender, Trump turns legitimate medical research into another front in his never-ending culture war.

The real question is: Are we going to fall for his con?

Carlyn Beccia is an award-winning author and illustrator of 13 books. Subscribe to Conversations with Carlyn for free content every Wednesday, or become a paid subscriber to get the juicy stuff on Sundays.