As Elon Musk launches the Department of Government Efficiency to advocate spending cuts, he has highlighted examples of what he considers waste.
Musk, the world’s richest individual, amplified posts on his X platform that mentioned the USA authorities funded analysis on “transgender” monkeys, cats on treadmills and “alcoholic rats” sprayed with bobcat urine.
“Some of these items will not be merely a waste of cash, however outright evil,” Musk wrote on November 13.
“Your tax {dollars} at ‘work’,” Musk mentioned on November 12 with a laughing emoji with tears.
Musk mentioned he needs the federal authorities to chop “a minimum of $2 trillion”, or nearly 30 p.c of what the US authorities spent in 2024. Trump didn’t specify a goal quantity for the group led by Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, however he set July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, as a deadline for figuring out cuts. The division could make suggestions, however Congress has the last word energy on spending selections.
Many federal analysis tasks Musk cited overlap with findings in annual “Festivus” experiences about authorities spending by Republican US Senator Rand Paul, who mentioned Musk and Ramaswamy can use his experiences as “inspiration”.
Some tasks stretch again many years. For instance, one record on X compiled by Dillon Loomis, host of the YouTube present Electrified, referred to as out Division of Agriculture bank card spending on “live performance tickets, tattoos, lingerie and automobile funds”. This got here from a 2003 authorities audit.
Musk boosted one other X put up by The Redheaded Libertarian that mentioned the federal government spent $4.5m “to spray alcoholic rats with bobcat urine” in 2020.
Medical analysis has lengthy been a bipartisan goal for criticism, Joshua Sewell of Taxpayers for Frequent Sense mentioned.
“Whether or not tequila makes fish offended, shrimp on a treadmill are two tasks that come to thoughts,” Sewell mentioned. “You comb via the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and different companies, and there are quite a lot of weird-sounding research – a minimum of superficially.”
Many complaints exclude the issues the analysis is attempting to deal with, which could change how folks understand its worth. Within the case of those new examples Musk cited, the cash went largely to analysis and tutorial establishments over a number of years to check animals to resolve well being issues in people.
Right here’s a better have a look at the main points behind the tasks shorthanded on social media:
The $33m for ‘transgender monkey’ analysis? This distorts spending on HIV examine
Loomis claimed $33.2m was spent on “transgender monkey analysis”. That’s false. It conflates spending on a monkey lab analysis website with a single examine.
Paul’s 2023 report mentioned the Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Illnesses spent $477,121 on a “transgender monkey examine”.
The NIH awarded three tasks $477,121 beginning in 2020 for analysis that included administering feminising hormone remedy to monkeys to check whether or not the remedy makes the monkeys extra vulnerable to HIV. The examine additionally examined how hormone remedy affected the monkeys’ response to HIV therapies.
Transgender ladies are at excessive threat of contracting HIV and account for disproportionate numbers of recent infections around the globe, the World Well being Group has mentioned.
The $33.2m spending determine refers to a monkey colony, however that’s not particularly for transgender analysis. The Publish and Courier, a Charleston, South Carolina, newspaper, reported in 2023 that the monkey website has existed because the Nineteen Seventies and is dwelling to about 3,500 rhesus monkeys which can be despatched to researchers engaged on vaccines and medical therapies.
The monkey website was within the information in November as a result of 43 of its monkeys escaped. As of this writing, the bulk had been recovered.
The $4.5m in 2020 for ‘alcoholic rats’ and bobcat urine? That’s unsuitable.
The Redheaded Libertarian account’s put up claims the federal government spent $4.5m in 2020 to “spray alcoholic rats with bobcat urine”. That was an actual examine, nevertheless it was not the one factor the grants, which have been spent over a number of years, funded.
Paul’s 2020 Festivus report says researchers used $4.575m in grants from the NIH and the Division of Veterans Affairs “to spray alcoholic rats with bobcat urine”.
The underlying analysis aimed to check alcoholism in people with post-traumatic stress dysfunction. The cash went to Louisiana State College’s (LSU’s) Well being Sciences Middle to check the chemical processes behind alcoholism, most of it funded over a number of years by the Nationwide Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
An LSU Well being New Orleans spokesperson mentioned the grants totalled about $5.6m from 2014 to 2024. The objective of the work is to enhance look after individuals who undergo from post-traumatic stress dysfunction (PTSD) and alcohol use dysfunction. This work has led to the invention of mind adjustments that will drive extreme alcohol use in folks recognized with PTSD.
One examine examined post-traumatic stress avoidance in rats when uncovered to predator odour (bobcat urine) to higher perceive learn how to deal with PTSD in people. The predator odour causes a trauma response within the rats, simulating trauma responses in people.
The $2.7m to check cats on a treadmill? Researchers sought human spinal wire therapies
The Redheaded Libertarian account talked about $2.7m for “learning cats on a treadmill”. The quantity is appropriate, nevertheless it neglected the analysis’s intention of attempting to grasp spinal wire therapies for people.
The NIH gave about $2.7m in federal funding from 2018 to 2021 to a mission learning the consequences of spinal wire accidents on cats’ strolling patterns.
Researchers within the US, Sweden and Russia collaborated on the analysis till it led to 2022.
In accordance with a mission abstract, the researchers studied neural processes concerned in a typical remedy for spinal wire accidents. The mission’s objective was offering “a scientific foundation for enchancment of [epidural spinal cord]-stimulation therapies” to enhance mobility in people.
Researchers carried out surgical procedure on cats for the examine, eradicating sections of their spinal cords. In a number of research, researchers noticed how the cats with severed spinal cords walked on treadmills.
In a single examine of cats in Russia, researchers discovered it was simpler to stimulate ahead movement over backward movement when utilizing epidural spinal wire stimulation on the cats. One other examine used transdermal stimulation, a unique remedy, and located the method helpful for “investigating new approaches of neurorehabilitation after spinal wire and mind damage and illnesses”.
The $12m for monkeys on meth? Researchers studied sleep
The Redheaded Libertarian’s put up mentioned the federal government spent a “portion of $12M to check monkeys on meth”. That was considered one of dozens of research funded by Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse grants to check methods to deal with and stop drug habit.
Paul’s 2023 report highlighted that examine, which concerned giving methamphetamine to monkeys to check the drug’s results on sleep and insomnia.
The examine lists 4 NIH grants as its funding supply. The funding from these grants over greater than twenty years totals near $12m, however the grants have supported multiple examine.
A type of grants has funded a mission researching benzodiazepine use in rhesus monkeys since 1998. The mission has acquired federal funding practically yearly that has totalled greater than $7m as of 2024. Researchers have printed dozens of research related to that grant funding, in accordance with a mission abstract on the NIH web site.
Portion of ‘$12m’ to check canine rectal temperature is unverified
The Redheaded Libertarian put up mentioned “a portion of $12M went to check canine rectal temperatures”. A researcher mentioned the “portion” amounted to borrowing a digital camera for sooner or later.
Paul’s report mentioned the Agriculture Division (USDA) awarded an unknown sum of cash to Southern Illinois College to check “canine rectal temperatures”.
The 2019 examine discovered proof that contradicted the favored perception that canines with darker fur expertise larger thermal change when uncovered to daylight than canines with lighter fur as a result of their inner temperatures adjusted on the similar fee. Researchers measured rectal, gastrointestinal and floor temperatures.
A sentence within the examine says it was partially supported by a USDA grant. One researcher, Erin Perry, informed PolitiFact that the USDA funding acknowledgement was required as a result of the examine used a thermal digital camera bought with a USDA grant for an unrelated mission and lent to the canine mission for sooner or later. She mentioned no authorities funding was used for the canine examine.
There was a human connection to this examine. Perry mentioned heatstroke is the main reason for operational- or training-related deaths in canines used for navy, legislation enforcement, and search and rescue functions.
Specialists on medical analysis defend the work
Some focused researchers have taken criticism of their tasks with a chuckle. Robert Kraut, professor emeritus at Carnegie Mellon College, studied the evolution of human facial expressions, which he mentioned was one of many first printed experiments “in what would ultimately develop into evolutionary psychology”. However in 1980, Senator William Proxmire awarded the Nationwide Institute for Psychological Well being a Golden Fleece Award for funding the analysis. Proxmire gave Golden Fleece Awards to public officers tongue in cheek for allegedly squandering public cash.
Kraut wrote that he put it on a T-shirt.
“Though my work was not practically as horny because the analysis on class relationships in Peruvian brothels, performed by an earlier Golden Fleece Award winner [van den Berghe and Primov, 1979], it did get media consideration,” Kraut wrote. “This will have been the primary time that non-specialists, apart from my spouse and mom, had ever learn considered one of my papers, and I gloried within the temporary media consideration.”
Leaders from the American Psychological Affiliation and the Consortium of Social Science Associations wrote in a 2014 essay that politicians who assault such tasks are overlooking analysis’s worth for fixing human issues.
Analysis associated to the venom of the Gila monster, a lizard, could as soon as have sounded fantastical. But it surely has a real-world influence.
Within the Nineties, researchers studied a hormone in Gila monster venom that helps the lizard regulate its blood sugar throughout hibernation, KFF, a US well being coverage organisation, wrote. Researchers then created an artificial model of the hormone, which led to a brand new class of medication, together with Ozempic, which the Meals and Drug Administration accepted to deal with diabetes however which has develop into widespread as an off-label weight-loss drug.
“The Gila monster’s venom will not be current in these medication,” KFF wrote.
