The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases paid researchers more than $200,000 in order to study HIV rates in transgender women by injecting monkeys with hormones.
Overseen by Dr. Anthony Fauci since 1984, the NIAID provided the Scripps Research Institute with $205,562 in funding to examine why transgender women have high rates of HIV, the Washington Free Beacon reported. In order to do this, monkeys were injected with female hormones.
“This study is a complete waste of time and precious research funds,” Katherine Roe, a neuroscientist with PETA, said in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner.
WATCH: NIH DIRECTOR SINGS ‘SOMEWHERE PAST THE PANDEMIC’
“HIV/AIDS thrives in the margins of society, where low education, unstable housing, and poverty heighten people’s vulnerability to HIV,” the description for the study says. “No population is more affected by these social injustices than transgender persons.”
Roe said that by injecting the monkeys with “hormones to somehow create transgender monkeys” in an attempt to “see how that affects the transmission of HIV,” the study will “yield nothing useful for humans, and there is no value to this study.”
“Humans are the only primates who contract HIV and develop AIDS,” Roe said. “Monkey’s don’t.”
A spokeswoman for Scripps explained to the Washington Free Beacon that the research study concerned “a sub-population of people at greater risk of HIV-infection, and factors that may or may not affect their response to a treatment/preventative approach in development.”
The study cites transgender women (TGW), “individuals who were assigned a male sex at birth but express their gender along a feminine spectrum,” as having an increased risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.
“A key part of gender affirmation in TGW is feminizing hormone therapy (FHT), of which the main drug is the hormone estradiol,” the study notes. “Although the physical female traits triggered by FHT are well established, less is known about the immunological effects of FHT in TGW.”
“It is through these types of targeted studies that substantive progress against HIV, cancer, ALS, dementia — indeed most diseases and conditions — will be made,” Scripps told the outlet.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Since overseeing the operations of the NIAID, Fauci has come under fire for previous studies involving animals. In October, Democratic and Republican lawmakers sent a letter to Fauci and President Joe Biden demanding answers regarding the alleged testing of an experimental drug on 44 beagle puppies.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the NIAID and Scripps Research Institute for comment but did not receive a response.
