The National Institutes of Health is funding a study to create 3D avatars for transgender-identifying people to envision the body they imagine they should have and then medically alter their figure accordingly. Another NIH-funded project aims to allow trans folks to adopt a voice congruent with their sex-denying identity. Multiple taxpayer-funded studies on transgender issues focus on “intersectionality,” disparity, and HIV.
The NIH Reporter database, which lists active federally funded research projects, shows 75 with “transgender” in the title, totaling more than $26 million of taxpayers’ money annually.
The NIH is wasting taxpayer dollars on a project titled “Personalized 3D avatar tool development for measurement of body perception across gender identities,” which purports to help people with gender dysphoria by mapping the difference between their actual physical embodiment and what they believe their body to be. But instead, it indulges their illness by defying science and denying the immutability of sex.
The tool (a prototype is pictured here) would scan individuals to create personalized 3D visualizations with which they can interact on mobile and desktop devices. Those behind the project say they are trying to create technology that “can potentially improve clinical outcomes by identifying specific sets of body parts as targets for treatments to improve body congruence.” In other words, the research project will create video game-like avatars with which people can envision specific body parts they want to target with surgery — which includes removing healthy organs, shaving facial bones, and more — to make themselves look more masculine or feminine.
The study is at the University of Toronto, Canada, and has received $288,000 so far. It began in 2021 and is scheduled to run through 2024.
Other Taxpayer-Funded Research on Ideal Voice, Acne, and Sex Ed
Another taxpayer-funded study addresses how transgender-identifying people experience challenges in adopting a voice characteristic of their so-called identity. Trans individuals “report that producing a voice congruent with their gender identity is crucial to affirming their gender identity. There are a variety of gender affirming services available, but medical interventions, such as surgery or hormones do not … ensure satisfaction with vocal gender.”
A third NIH-funded study looks at acne in the trans-identifying population. “Little is known about the interplay of endogenous and exogenous hormones on acne incidence, severity, impact, treatment, and experience,” the summary says.
NIH is also funding “A fully functional online interactive sexual education tool” for “transgender and gender expansive (TGE) youth.” Such children “are at high risk of several sexual health outcomes that have life-long impacts including sexually transmitted infections, early, unwanted pregnancies, and unwanted sexual contact/intimate partner violence. … [C]urrent educational and clinical structures largely ignore their experiences,” according to the project summary. The tool will clarify “that gender-affirming medical interventions do not prevent unintended pregnancies.” It will also address what it calls “difficulties navigating partner consent because it is often described in heteronormative, binary terms in sexual education classes.”
The bluehead wrasse, a small fish and sequential hermaphrodite, meaning it contains both types of reproductive organs, will be the subject of another taxpayer-funded transgender study: “Organisms that naturally undergo sex transformations in response to changes in their social environment provide excellent systems in which to investigate mechanisms of behavioral sex specification.” Adult female bluehead wrasses can rapidly switch sex in response to changes in social structure, according to the project.
Four ongoing NIH-funded studies related to transgenderism mention “disparities” in their project titles and three mention “stigma.” NIH even issued a Notice of Special Interest in understanding how so-called “intersectional stigmas” harm health. About half of all NIH-funded transgender research, including that which has been completed, relates to higher rates of HIV among the transgender population, totaling approximately $80 million since 1985.
NIH Studying Cross-Sex Hormones’ Many Risks
While the Biden administration pushes to make “gender-affirming health care” more widely available, the Department of Health and Human Services’ own NIH is also funding multiple studies premised upon how there is scarce research on the long-term risks of taking cross-sex hormones and on whether they improve mental health.
Despite all the possible health risks, President Joe Biden has issued executive orders charging “HHS to work with states to promote expanded access to gender-affirming care.” The administration has issued directives that federal health insurance benefits must “provide comprehensive gender-affirming care.”
Taxpayers are already paying for transgender procedures, as they are covered by some insurers and Medicaid in some states.
Woke Waste
House Budget Committee Republicans have announced “woke waste” is among the spending cuts they want in a debt limit deal. According to the House Budget Committee:
The recent omnibus included millions of dollars in funding for woke policies that American taxpayers shouldn’t be footing the bill for, including $1.2 million for “LGBTQIA+ Pride Centers,” $1 million for a space for “gender-expansive people of color” … and $750,000 for “Transgender and Gender nonconforming and Intersex (TGI) immigrant women in Los Angeles.”
Under the Republican plan, billions of dollars in savings would also come from ending the Environmental Protection Agency’s “environmental justice” programs, enacting new work requirements for welfare, halting Biden’s student loan forgiveness, and getting back unspent Covid-19 pandemic funds.
