Biden admin pours over $100 million toward transgender research grants, many backfire

A recent investigation demonstrates that when it comes to endorsing transgenderism, the Biden administration is putting its money where its mouth is.

The Biden administration has awarded over $100 million in federal grants to colleges, universities, and hospitals to fund research into “transgender” medicine, according to a report published by the Capital Research Center on Sept. 12.

Researchers Parker Thayer and Katie Cagle write that the Biden Administration has spent “over $104 million in payments to initiatives mostly or exclusively promoting, subsidizing, or studying transgenderism.”

Thayer and Cagle point out that despite claims made by Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine that “gender-affirming care” is necessary and safe for youth, these federally-funded research programs “examined catastrophic side effects from the hormonal and surgical transition procedures that the administration insists are supported by overwhelming medical consensus.”

Several of the grants funded research into transgender treatment specifically for children.

 A $161,192 study conducted by the University of Wisconsin, for example, investigated how social media influences youth’s perceptions of gender identity. 

Another $136,000 study by Princeton University examined the relationship between hormone therapies and mental health for transgender-identifying youth, drawing attention to the fact that no existing study can actually prove the treatments are psychologically beneficial. 

Several studies flagged in the Capital Research Center report dealt with the side effects of transgender treatment, such as increased risk of HIV infection, prostate cancer, and breast cancer. 

A grant to the Medical College of Wisconsin observed that estrogen, which is used in “gender-affirming hormone therapy,” is a “well-established risk factor for breast cancer.”

The Biden administration even issued a grant worth over $1 million to the University California, San Diego to study prostate cancer risk among transgender-identifying adults.

Emory University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Johns Hopkins University were all awarded grants by the federal government in order to study how hormone therapies made patients more susceptible to HIV infection, with the schools being tasked to find ways to promote such testing. 

One of the largest awards, worth $5.4 million, went to UCLA for the purpose of developing an app specifically targeting “young transgender women” in order to improve sexual health and encourage HIV testing. 

The College Republicans chapter at Johns Hopkins University told Campus Reform that the JHU grant resembled something that, “two years ago, would have only existed as a Babylon Bee headline.”

“It is a gross insult to students and professors, who spend a lot of their time writing grant applications for their scientifically legitimate research, that Johns Hopkins University is receiving $3.5 million dollars to discover something health experts have known since the 1970s: sexual relationships between men increase risk of HIV,” JHU College Republicans said. 

A group official continued, “It is a sadistic joke that the Left pushes these health consequences, and then spends $3.5 million studying the cause of the health consequences they promoted in the first place.”

All universities mentioned in this report have been contacted for comment. This story will be updated accordingly.