Even though monkeys can't contract HIV, Dr. Anthony Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) allocated more than $200,000 last year for researchers to study why transgender women have high rates of HIV by injecting male monkeys with female hormones, a PETA neuroscientist said.
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as part of the study, researchers subject male monkeys to feminizing hormone therapy to study how it impacts the immune systems of the monkeys.
NIAID began HIV-related tests on monkeys a year after Fauci took charge of the agency in 1984.
Each year, NIAID acquires 400 to 600 rhesus monkeys from a South Carolina island leased by Charles River Laboratories, which has a $27.5 million contract with the Fauci-led agency, the Washington Free Beacon reported on Jan. 10.
Injecting male monkeys with female hormones is "yet another pointless, wasteful monkey torture experiment," Dr. Katherine Roe, a neuroscientist with PETA, told the Free Beacon.
"It's just bad science to suggest that dosing monkeys with feminizing medication makes them good stand-ins for humans," Roe said. "This study will not help to prevent or treat HIV and will not help transgender women."
Roe said the NIAID experiments are ineffective because monkeys cannot contract HIV. They contract Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, a milder form of the disease. She faults the NIH for spending billions on using monkeys in HIV research, since the primates cannot contract AIDS.
Fauci's agency has a long history of controversial animal testing. In November, reports revealed that NIAID funded a study that infected beagles with heart-worm larvae and euthanized them after the experiments. As part of another study, researchers infected beagles with mutated bacteria from ticks.
A document obtained by the White Coat Waste Project (WCWP) revealed that NIAID has spent $13.5 million in taxpayer funding on experiments that involve injecting the monkeys with various infectious diseases, such as Ebola and the Lassa virus, that results in hemorrhaging, pain, brain damage, loss of motor control, and organ failure.
“In many of these experiments, Fauci and staff intentionally withhold pain relief, even though these are some of the most excruciating experiments in the federal government,” Justin Goodman, WCWP vice president told The Epoch Times.
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