• At a recent event on Capitol Hill hosted by Senate Democrats, the immediate-past National Institutes of Health (NIH) director lied to Congress by stating, “I can assure you that NIH has never funded transgender mice.” 
• Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, a former animal experimenter, ran the NIH when many grants for transgender animal testing were approved and funded.
• Of the ten transgender animal testing grants that have been cut by Trump and DOGE following White Coat Waste’s (WCW) investigation, six were funded when Bertagnolli ran the NIH.
• At the event, Senator Elizabeth Warren echoed widely-debunked misinformation meant to deflect criticism of wasteful transgender animal experiments.
• WCW’s campaign and the Trump cuts have saved millions of tax dollars and thousands of lab animals from abuse.

At a recent event on Capitol Hill, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) echoed widely debunked misinformation and indicated that wasteful government spending on transgender animal experiments was fake news. She couldn’t be more wrong, and we’ve even got pictures to prove it. 

In response to Warren, former President Joe Biden’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, shamelessly remarked, “I can assure you that NIH has never funded transgender mice.”

Bertagnolli lied to Congress.  WCW has documented how the NIH wasted over a quarter-billion taxpayer dollars on cruel transgender animal experiments. Even more egregious is that Bertagnolli (a former animal experimenter who burnt off animals’ skin) personally ran the NIH when many of these disturbing grants uncovered by WCW were approved and funded. 

Of the ten transgender animal testing grants that have been cut so far by Trump and DOGE following WCW’s investigations, six were awarded under Bertagnolli’s tenure as NIH director from November 2023 to January 2025. Several of the now-defunct animal experiments were even conducted at Harvard, where Bertagnolli was previously a faculty member.

Additionally, prior to becoming director of the entire NIH, Bertagnolli ran the National Cancer Institute from October 2022 to November 2023 and oversaw the funding of at least one of the transgender animal testing grants exposed by WCW and canceled by Trump. 

With that now-canceled $299,000 NIH grant, Harvard created “transmasculine” animals by giving female mice testosterone and removing their ovaries and created “transfeminine” animals by castrating male mice and injecting them with estrogen. The animals were then implanted with cancer cells. Harvard planned to abuse and kill 1,500 animals in the testing.

Our work isn’t done. WCW is still urging DOGE to cut two other active NIH grants for transgender animal experiments that were funded under Bertagnolli and have received over $3.5 million in taxpayers’ money to date.

Transgender mice are real, and really wasteful, and this kind of stupid spending is exactly why the NIH needs a makeover.

There’s still dozens of other active grants funding transgender animal testing that we’re also urging DOGE to ditch.