As Elon Musk launches the Division of Authorities Effectivity to suggest spending cuts, he has highlighted examples of what he considers waste.
Musk, the world’s richest individual, amplified posts on his X platform that stated the US authorities funded analysis on “transgender” monkeys, cats on treadmills and “alcoholic rats” sprayed with bobcat urine.
“Some of these things will not be merely a waste of cash, however outright evil,” Musk wrote on November 13.
“Your tax {dollars} at ‘work’,” Musk stated on November 12 with a laughing emoji with tears.
Musk stated he needs the federal authorities to chop “at the very least $2 trillion”, or virtually 30 % 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 final word energy on spending choices.
Many federal analysis initiatives Musk cited overlap with findings in annual “Festivus” reviews about authorities spending by Republican US Senator Rand Paul, who stated Musk and Ramaswamy can use his reviews as “inspiration”.
Some initiatives stretch again a long time. For instance, one checklist on X compiled by Dillon Loomis, host of the YouTube present Electrified, known 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 stated 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 Widespread Sense stated.
“Whether or not tequila makes fish indignant, shrimp on a treadmill are two initiatives that come to thoughts,” Sewell stated. “You comb via the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and different businesses, and there are a whole lot of weird-sounding research – at the very least 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 small print behind the initiatives shorthanded on social media:
The $33m for ‘transgender monkey’ analysis? This distorts spending on HIV research
Loomis claimed $33.2m was spent on “transgender monkey analysis”. That’s false. It conflates spending on a monkey lab analysis web site with a single research.
Paul’s 2023 report stated the Nationwide Institute of Allergy and Infectious Ailments spent $477,121 on a “transgender monkey research”.
The NIH awarded three initiatives $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 prone to HIV. The research additionally examined how hormone remedy affected the monkeys’ response to HIV remedies.
Transgender girls are at excessive danger of contracting HIV and account for disproportionate numbers of latest infections world wide, the World Well being Group has stated.
The $33.2m spending determine refers to a monkey colony, however that’s not particularly for transgender analysis. The Submit and Courier, a Charleston, South Carolina, newspaper, reported in 2023 that the monkey web site has existed for the reason that Seventies and is house to about 3,500 rhesus monkeys which might be despatched to researchers engaged on vaccines and medical remedies.
The monkey web site 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 flawed.
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 research, however it was not the one factor the grants, which had 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 stated the grants totalled about $5.6m from 2014 to 2024. The purpose of the work is to enhance take care of individuals who undergo from post-traumatic stress dysfunction (PTSD) and alcohol use dysfunction. This work has led to the invention of mind adjustments which will drive extreme alcohol use in folks identified with PTSD.
One research examined post-traumatic stress avoidance in rats when uncovered to predator odour (bobcat urine) to higher perceive the way 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 “finding out cats on a treadmill”. The quantity is appropriate, however it overlooked 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 undertaking finding out the results 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 undertaking abstract, the researchers studied neural processes concerned in a standard remedy for spinal wire accidents. The undertaking’s purpose 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 research, 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 research 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 research used transdermal stimulation, a special 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 stated 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 research, which concerned giving methamphetamine to monkeys to check the drug’s results on sleep and insomnia.
The research lists 4 NIH grants as its funding supply. The funding from these grants over greater than 20 years totals near $12m, however the grants have supported multiple research.
A kind of grants has funded a undertaking researching benzodiazepine use in rhesus monkeys since 1998. The undertaking has obtained federal funding almost yearly that has totalled greater than $7m as of 2024. Researchers have revealed dozens of research linked to that grant funding, in response to a undertaking abstract on the NIH web site.
Portion of ‘$12m’ to check canine rectal temperature is unverified
The Redheaded Libertarian put up stated “a portion of $12M went to check canine rectal temperatures”. A researcher stated the “portion” amounted to borrowing a digital camera for sooner or later.
Paul’s report stated the Agriculture Division (USDA) awarded an unknown sum of cash to Southern Illinois College to check “canine rectal temperatures”.
The 2019 research 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 identical price. Researchers measured rectal, gastrointestinal and floor temperatures.
A sentence within the research 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 research used a thermal digital camera bought with a USDA grant for an unrelated undertaking and lent to the canine undertaking for sooner or later. She stated no authorities funding was used for the canine research.
There was a human connection to this research. Perry stated heatstroke is the main reason behind operational- or training-related deaths in canines used for navy, regulation enforcement, and search and rescue functions.
Consultants on medical analysis defend the work
Some focused researchers have taken criticism of their initiatives with a chuckle. Robert Kraut, professor emeritus at Carnegie Mellon College, studied the evolution of human facial expressions, which he stated was one of many first revealed experiments “in what would finally 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 almost as attractive 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 likely 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 transient 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 initiatives 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. Nevertheless it has a real-world influence.
Within the Nineteen 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 authorised to deal with diabetes however which has develop into in style as an off-label weight-loss drug.
“The Gila monster’s venom will not be current in these medicine,” KFF wrote.
