The government-funded research study that produced transgender monkeys remains in chaos after a Washington Free Beacon report exposed its existence, internal e-mails reveal. Mere days after the Free Beacon report on the research study that injected male monkeys with female hormonal agents, the research study’s lead scientist “expressed concerns” about releasing the outcomes since his/her name would appear on the last report, according to internal interactions gotten by the Free Beacon through a Freedom of Information Act demand.
Professor Mauricio Martins, who heads the research study for Scripps Research, notified the National Institutes of Health of the advancement in a Jan. 19 email, complaining that his monkey-based research study to identify why transgender females have high rates of HIV was “being twisted and berated by people who are not qualified to judge its merit.”
The NIH official who got the e-mail, Dr. Jeff Cummins, informed Martins he supported the research study and called the Free Beacon’s story “misinformation.”
“Unfortunately, these are the times in which we live,” Cummins wrote in his Jan. 20 response to Martins. “I am amazed by the misinformation that is so quickly spread on social media.”
The e-mails are the current example of public reaction hindering the Biden administration’s extreme costs efforts. After the Free Beacon exposed in February that the Biden administration was funding the circulation of fracture pipelines to promote racial equity, for instance, the New York Times reported that the “uproar” over the program “derailed” the administration’s whole drug policy.
Cummins did not react to a Free Beacon query on what was “misinformation.” A spokesperson for Scripps Biomedical Research, which now runs in collaboration with the University of Florida, informed the Free Beacon the lead scientist had “concerns about the negative impact of prior media coverage and subsequent politicization of the research.”
The NIH edited the lead scientist’s name from the now-public e-mails, and the scientists have yet to release their findings from the research study, which stopped getting financing on April 1.
The preliminary Free Beacon report detailed how NIH-funded scientists at UF Scripps Biomedical Research injected male monkeys with feminizing hormonal agent drugs to figure out why transgender females have high rates of HIV. If their immune systems were compromised in reaction to the simian immunodeficiency infection– the monkey equivalent of HIV, Researchers then checked the monkeys to identify.
The NIH-funded research study faced criticism from animal rights groups, federal government responsibility companies, and transgender activists. Fox News host Tucker Carlson covered the Free Beacon story in a January segment with an official from PETA, which blasted the research study as pointless and cruel.
“It’s an experiment that an eighth-grade science student could figure out is totally meaningless,” said Kathy Guillermo, vice president of the animal rights group.
The University of Florida stated its scientists “stand behind its relevance.”
“This important research is necessary to stay ahead of a global epidemic that has cost an estimated 35 million lives since 1981, and continues to affect an estimated 38 million people globally who are living with HIV,” the group told the Free Beacon.
Cummins sought to safeguard the research study in internal e-mails, ensuring Martins his efforts to resolve a”critical knowledge gap in gender-affirming hormone therapy” are “incredibly important.”
Martins divulged in the e-mails that he was blindsided by the source of the reaction.
“To my surprise, the segments in question prompted a backlash on Twitter by the transgender community, who stands to gain the most by the research outlined,” Martins wrote in the Jan. 19 email to Cummins.
The transgender monkey research study belongs of a bigger effort from the NIH to counter the spread of HIV in the transgender neighborhood, whose members are 49 times more likely to be contaminated with the illness than nontransgender people, according to the company. Other NIH research studies include a $155,000 task with a University of Alabama scientist to study how testosterone treatment for ladies deteriorates disease-fighting bacteria in the vaginal area. A task at Emory University got $230,000 from the agency to study the rectal immune cells of transgender individuals.
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is run by Dr. Anthony Fauci, granted $477,121 to the research study between December 2021 and April 2022. The NIH department obtains 400 to 600 rhesus macaque monkeys each year from a South Carolina island leased by Charles River Laboratories, which has a $27.5 million federal contract. The transgender monkey research study utilized rhesus monkeys, although scientists got them from the Wisconsin National Primate Research.
Scientists kept the transgender monkeys alive after the research study and returned them to their nest at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, according to files acquired through the info demand. The center did not react to questions on the status of the monkeys after the hormonal agent treatments.
H/T The Washington Free Beacon