Fox News host Tucker Carlson slammed Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday night for funding a "completely pointless" study that created transgender monkeys, which was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
"So many of these animal experiments seem completely pointless, they are inflicting massive cruelty on animals who are helpless, and they seem driven by research dollars," Carlson said. "It's so awful that I almost don't want to know more about it."
The National Institutes of Health awarded researchers $205,000 to investigate why transgender women have high rates of HIV by subjecting male monkeys to feminizing hormone therapy. The study, revealed by the Free Beacon on Monday, has driven outrage from animal rights groups.
Carlson spoke with Kathy Guillermo, senior vice president of PETA, to discuss the cruelty of the study. Guillermo noted that monkeys do not get HIV, so a study on human volunteers would be far more effective.
"It's an experiment that an eighth-grade science student could figure out is totally meaningless," Guillermo said.