Posted on 02/02/2019 11:04:15 AM PST by Kaslin
And the winner of Senator Joni Ernst’s (R-IA) January 2019 Squeal Award is…the National Institutes of Health (NIH)!
As Sen. Ernst explains in her press release: “The [NIH] supported ten different cat studies—funded from grants totaling $1.3 MILLION of your money—that concluded classical music has an effect on cat behaviors. For example, a study found that after playing classical music for cats every day, they were less likely to poop outside of the litter box or cough up hairballs.”
Kudos to Sen. Ernst for letting the cat out of the bag about this boondoggle. Her report provides yet another a case study for why more transparency and accountability about federal spending on animal experiments are so badly needed.
NIH is especially deserving of Ernst’s dishonorable distinction. The agency squanders an estimated $15 billion annually on questionable animal experiments like these, roughly half of its entire research budget. At the same time, NIH’s own awardees report that 87.5 percent of biomedical research—especially animal experiments—is wasteful. Our two-million-member taxpayer watchdog group is the only organization dedicated to defunding the rampant waste and abuse in government animal laboratories.
Recently, in his holiday-time Waste Report, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) wrote, “Sometimes, there are federal grants that perfectly encapsulate everything broken with the federal scientific research subsidization industry. One such grant is the much-popularized “quails on cocaine” study….” He was referring to an NIH-funded project in which quails were given cocaine and their sexual habits were observed in order to study “cocaine use and risky sexual practices” that have already been observed in humans. The cost to you and me? A cool $874,000.
It gets worse. As we documented in our “Ivy League Flunkers” report co-authored with former Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) organization Pursuit, Princeton University experimenters have spent over $3.7 million and counting in taxpayers’ money to study why humans can talk and monkeys can’t. Their proud achievement?Creating a computer simulation of what it might sound like for monkeys to say “Will you marry me?” Hard to believe taxpayers are funding this, right? Listen to the primate proposal that you paid for
At an event we co-hosted last year with Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL), he skewered other wasteful and bizarre NIH animal experiments, including what he called “ghoulish and horrifying” tests where pregnant animals were force-fed massive doses of herbal supplements used to induce “homemade abortions” to see if it harmed the mothers and their unborn babies.
We also highlighted with Rep. Gaetz how the NIH has spent over $30 million, 10 years, and 3,000 animals on outlandish tests in which animals were locked in chambers and exposed to large blasts of cell phone radiation—greater than ten times that of an iPhone—all day long for two years, from before birth until they were killed. NIH researchers told reporters, “Given the inconsistent pattern of the findings, the fact that the subjects were rats and mice rather than people and the high level of radiation used, [NIH] could not extrapolate from the data the potential health effects on humans.” Even the lead experimenter on the project admitted, “I have not changed the way I use a cellphone.” Yet, in typical government fashion, in November the agency announced plans to continue the reckless project.
Senior House appropriator Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) has just re-introduced bipartisan legislation that would improve transparency and accountability about these and other NIH animal tests, stating, “I am reintroducing the FACT Act in order to protect animals and taxpayers from unnecessary animal tests funded by the federal government.”
Once you start looking, it’s not hard to see why experts estimate 87.5% of biomedical research is wasteful and why taxpayer-funded biomedical research is far less productive than that in the private sector.
Last Congress, Republicans led the charge to combat this waste and abuse. WCW’s work with GOP lawmakers was responsible for restricting wasteful testing on dogs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, shuttering monkey nicotine addiction tests at the Food and Drug Administration and improving oversight of taxpayer-funded animal experiments at the NIH, and other agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture.
There’s more work to be done, but thanks to waste warriors like Sens. Rand Paul and Joni Ernst, we’re starting to send wasteful and stupid experiments on cats and other animals to the litterbox of history where they belong.
Would the really study how monkeys could communicate”will you marry me?”. If it’s a boy monkey and a girl monkey? What about the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered monkeys? Don’t we need to give them equal rights in marriage?
So, like, monkeys can’t really talk?
Those Planet of the Apes movies aren’t documentaries?
Well, there’s another $10 bet I lose.
When Vlvaldi is played for the cats, does it improve behavior if the matching season is played from the Four Seasons?
It has long been suspected that if held continuously underwater, mountain goats will drown. After an extensive study costing $10 million, we now know this to be true, and we can move on to prairie animals.
Macaca! Macaca! Macaca!
POTUS needs to tell his executive department heads to individually review and approve EVERY proposed grant.
Most of these do not pass the smell/logic/common sense test and need to be not funded or unfunded!
Some of these “Science Bozos” need to be sued for fleecing the taxpayers!
[ You Paid For It: Vivaldi-listening Cats, Coked-up Quails, and Monkey Marriage Proposals ]
That’s weird. I figured cats would go for Bach and the monkeys would go for Strauss.
I’m just trying to toss them a bone.....
Ah.....Bach!
I think once you’ve said that you’ve said it all.
Some may consider that horse-and-buggy thinking.
" so? I got free headset out of it...wat you get?"
I agree, kudos to Sen. Ernst.
And if Sen. Ernst would read FRee Republic, then she would know that pre-FDR era, state sovereignty-respecting Supreme Court justices had clarified in general that the states have never expressly constitutionally delegated to the feds the specific power to appropriate taxes for the projects that she’s identified.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"The “Holy Grail” of organized crime is to control government power to tax." —me
"The constitutionally undefined political parties are basically competing, corrupt voter unions, union dues paid by means of unconstitutional federal taxes.” —me
"The smart crooks long ago figured out that getting themselves elected to federal office to make unconstitutional tax laws to fill their pockets is a much easier way to make a living than robbing banks." —me
"Federal career lawmakers probably laugh all the way to the bank to deposit bribes for putting loopholes for the rich and corporations in tax appropriations laws, Congress actually not having the express constitutional authority to make most appropriations laws where domestic policy is concerned. Such laws are based on stolen state powers and uniquely associated stolen state revenues." —me
Nice. BTW, it was Fred Olmsted’s engagements I was watching the other night. I guess he retired as a Captain.
April, 1972 it claims.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfrscGQKg2g
I’ve seen him before on “Dogfights”.
Ernst is in trouble in Iowa and is having to pander. Up for reelection in 2020. She’s a fake.
Eyep he was out of Udorn..flew with 13th TFW..AIM-7..F-4D...shoot down MIG-21
4/16/72
It never ends. It never has. We have seen these kinds of abuses for decades. Our gubment is corrupt, inept, wasteful. It is broken beyond repair. We have danced around the only real solution there can be. If we do not have the guts to destroy it and start anew or make terrible consequences for the kinds of destructive behaviors we see we deserve all the misery we get.
Who has the guts and the ability to decapitate the snake? Who will pull the trigger and how?
Until that comes we will die a slow and agonizing death of thousands of cuts.
They should fund an experiment where they build a wall to prevent people from coming from a proverty stricken, 3rd world shithole country, and take billions of dollars in free handouts. The study would be used to determine how many people in the host country live a happier life free from mudering thugs, drug dealers, and drunk drivers.
I think I’ll apply for a $25 billion dollar grant in the next funding cycle.
When asked about marriage, Bonobos all answered that promiscuity all the time with everybody was preferred.
Fire the lot of them. I hate experimenting on helpless animals.
Cute! :)
I am a helpless animal being experimented upon by the Federal government in all sorts of ways.
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