Video: https://www.tiktok.com/@distilledscience/video/7478505389760204063
Transcript
$8 million for making mice transgender. This is real. A transgenic mouse is like Spider-Man after being bit by a radioactive spider. Still human but now carrying spider DNA, giving him new abilities. Go with! Similarly, transgenic mice have genes from other organisms inserted into their DNA, allowing scientists to study diseases in new ways. For example, scientists create mice having human genes linked to Alzheimer's, helping us understand and find treatments for the disease. These genetically modified mice have been a new since the 70s and are extremely common in medical research, helping scientists study genesis, study diseases, genetics, and drug effectiveness. While at first it seemed like Trump was just confusing these two words, the White House has since issued an official statement that says, The fake news losers at CNN immediately tried to fact check it, but President Trump was right. Apparently our government is now calling names like a middle school playground. It goes on to list six different rodent studies with a total budget a little over 8 million. The studies involve mice treated with an array of techniques to impact. their sex hormone levels, including the use of transgenic mice, such as this study, which modified female mice to have a specific type of androgen receptor, to let scientists study the mechanism behind how different hormones like testosterone impact reproductive function. Many of these studies were trying to better understand the health and disease risks faced by transgender humans, but it's all part of our broader quest to better understand the human endocrine system, which is important for all of us. However, if you give a female mouse testosterone, it masculinizes it. It does not make it transgender. That term is about gender, which is a concept unique to humans. Even if a mouse displayed behaviors or biological characteristics typical of the opposite sex, it would still not be transgender. The goal of these studies was not to make mice transgender, which would first require them to have a human-like awareness and ability to experience gender identity. Which I don't think any of us want, because then they might... Try to take over the world.
Additional notes
When I first saw this, I did jump to conclusions and think that he was simply confusing the two words. While it is possible that this is still what happened–as they WERE MAKING transgenic mice (at least in part), not transgender mice–it is also true that these studies could be classified as primarily “transgender studies,” which is something that he wants to defund, even if they are conducting rigorous science with potential wider applications. As such, it could equally be that he was extremely intentional with his word choice, aiming to misrepresent the science and ridicule the fact that millions of dollars would be spent to “make mice transgender,” which evokes an emotional reaction of “that’s an absurd thing to spend money on,” specifically BECAUSE it is such a human-centric term. This type of communication only serves to further the political divide in our country and to increase public distrust in our scientific institutions., and it saddens me to see it coming from such a high authority. If only it surprised me.
References
- White House statement and six rodent studies mentioned in transcript; source URLs, DOI, and PMID not listed in workbook.