On March 4th President Trump did an address to congress, he talked about many things including how the Department of Government Efficiency, but more commonly known as DOGE, has discovered billions of dollars in fraud. He then goes further and talks about where all that money was spent. Though one in particular statement that President Trump said really stood out to me: “$8 million dollars for making mice transgender”. So what are transgender mice?
What President Trump was referring to was the use of transgenic mice, transgender mice do not exist. Transgenic mice are genetically modified mice that are modified specifically to carry foreign DNA to help scientists understand genetics, diseases and drug treatments. Mice are genetically similar to humans so it is beneficial to be testing on mice instead of humans. For example, transgenic mice have been used to help the understanding of diseases like Alzheimers, ALS, cancer and autoimmune diseases like HIV.
In this situation, DOGE found money that the Biden administration gave to help the funding of using transgenic mice to understand gender affirming healthcare. Such as in 2023 the National Cancer Institute awarded $299,940 to help study breast cancer rates and if testosterone therapy speeds up breast cancer rates for individuals who are transitioning from female to male.
Additionally, DOGE also found that $1,200,000 was awarded to the University of California, San Diego. The money was used to help understand how androgens, which are male hormones like testosterone, affect the reproductive health of transgender men (assigned female at birth, transitioning to male). And how testosterone impacts their reproductive system and fertility, and using the transgenic mice to further their research and understanding.
On the whitehouse.gov page you can find where all the $8 million dollars went under the article “Yes, Biden Spent Millions on Transgender Animal Experiments”. Even though these experiments were to help the understanding of how gender affirming care can become safer by using transgenic mice.
I think that it's important to understand and make sure that gender affirming care is safe for transgender people. Because transgender people are humans too and if they want to take medicines to make them happier in life and make them feel truly like themselves, then why not let them live their life and make the medicines safer for them.
What do you think about gender affirming care?
What do you think about the use of transgenic mice?
Do you think this was money well spent? Why or why not?
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/04/politics/fact-check-trump-address-congress/index.html
Replies
Good topic choice and summary Allyson! The issue is that this was posted four days late and you didn't reply to any student comments whihc is worth 30 points.
I think gender-affirming care is unnecessary because, people should be accept the body that they were born with. Instead of medical treatments, they should find other ways to feel comfortable with themselves. Plus we are spending our money on things that are not even useful.
I completely disagree with the way money was spent on transgender mice. In my opinion, the resources could have been used for more important issues in medical research and other programs. Also, at a time when we are facing many health and economic struggles, spending a bunch of taxpayers' money on research that is pointless seems wasteful.
I don't think it is well spent. We may be able to find some sort of information out about doing this. I think we could use this money on way better and more beneficial things rather than this. I think we could also find a better way to experiment on this kind of thing.
No I do not agree with any of this. First of all we are spending money on pointless stuff, you are born who you are and why change it. That money could have gone to better things. Using them for studies for like cancer was good becuas then maybe that would help us get closer to a cure.
I think there are many opportunities and things we could learn from transgender mice, however I believe that it's a bit inhumane forcing a living animal to be something it wasn't born to be. I also think that there could be other ways that are less inhumane then changing a mouse's gender.