Animal Testing and Ethics

A group of House Republicans led by Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, joined by GOP Conference Chair Lisa McClain of Michigan and more than a dozen others, has sent appropriators a letter asking that the fiscal year 2027 Labor–HHS spending bill prohibit federal funding for animal research involving "drugs, surgery, or other interventions" intended to alter the human body for transgender‑related studies. The push follows watchdog White Coat Waste Project and House Oversight investigations that unearthed NIH‑funded experiments to create "transgender" mice, rats and monkeys meant to mimic transgender children and adults, including a Harvard project in which female mice had their ovaries removed and were given testosterone to model transmasculine patients. The article notes that the NIH recently awarded another $584,117 to the University of California, San Diego for FY 2026 to continue a mouse study on cross‑sex hormone treatments, despite Trump’s 2025 move to cut $8 million in such grants and a federal court order that temporarily restored funding only for that year. White Coat Waste says FOIA records show the UCSD project will use nearly 10,000 mice subjected to invasive surgeries, hormone injections, brain drilling, toxin injections and eventual decapitation, and argues Gosar’s language is needed to ensure taxpayers are not forced to fund what critics call "barbaric" or "woke pseudoscience." The effort highlights how GOP lawmakers are trying to use the appropriations process to both shape federal transgender‑medicine research and curb controversial animal testing, a tactic that is already drawing polarized reactions in online debates over science, ethics and culture‑war politics.