Posted on 10/12/2002 6:29:42 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
$24 million retirement home for chimpanzees shows need for separation of science and state, Libertarians say
WASHINGTON< DC -- A plan by the National Institutes of Health to spend $24 million on a retirement facility for chimpanzees shows why America needs a separation of science and state, Libertarians say.
“This Club Med for monkeys illustrates how easy it is for government bureaucrats to go bananas with other people’s money,” said Libertarian Party Communications Director George Getz. “Amazingly, these chimps will get better treatment in their golden years than the chump taxpayer.”
In an effort to house 800 chimpanzees that have been “retired” after being used in medical experiments, the National Institutes of Health has created Chimp Haven, an animal sanctuary in Louisiana.
The total cost to taxpayers: $24 million over 10 years, or $30,000 per chimpanzee.
Organizers say the 200-acre, forested facility – complete with fences and moats that encircle grassy areas – is designed to provide a “stimulating and responsive environment essential for chimpanzee development and rehabilitation.”
But Libertarians say the plan proves that even relatively non-controversial programs such as medical research need to be taken out of the hands of government.
“Who would have imagined that an agency created to find cures for cancer, AIDS and other debilitating diseases would end up building a $24 million monkey house?” Getz asked. “Any private research organization that pulled a stunt like this could be punished immediately by donors. But it’s a lot harder to withhold funding for a government program, because the ‘donors’ are taxpayers who don’t have a choice.”
The solution is to separate science and state, and let individual Americans decide which projects are worthy of funding, Libertarians say.
“With private donors in charge, perhaps the monkeys used in experiments would be given to a zoo, purchased by a private animal sanctuary or even adopted by an animal-rights organization,” Getz said. “And if donors wanted to build a Taj Mahal for monkeys, they could do it with their money, not yours.”
Unfortunately, the government’s impulse to monkey around with tax money isn’t limited to studying primates, Libertarians point out. For example, over the past two years the federal government has spent:
* $750,000 for grasshopper research in Alaska.
* $2 million to house a worm collection at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, DC.
* $400,000 to study manure management at the National Swine Research Center in Iowa.
* $4.2 million for a shrimp aquiculture research project in six states.
* $400,000 for the Montana Sheep Institute.
And here’s a suggestion for taxpayers who are going ape over ponying up millions of dollars for a monkey retirement center, said Getz:
“Let’s retire the politicians who signed off on the NIH’s $27 billion budget. Lock them away in Chimp Haven, where they’ll be unable to continue their gorilla war against the taxpayer.”
Monkey bars, swingin' stars
Countin' the cars, by the monkey bars
We've got a job in the Amazon
Everyone's a jungle, out to con
We drive for miles and see lots of trees
We get home in time to pay our managers fees
Monkey bars, swingin' stars
Countin' the cars, by the monkey bars
Eatin's easy when you're chimps like us
Banana splits are a definite plus
Things'll be better when we climb our way out
Our hands may slip, but not cause of doubt
Monkey bars, swingin' stars
Countin' the cars, by the monkey bars
Monkey bars, swingin' stars
Settin' up those pars by the monkey bars
1982, Coney Hatch
"Hold muh beer an' watch me spend!"
Sittin' on the street
Just countin' the bucks...
Arrrrrrrrgh!
LOL!
One leads inevitably to the other, I'm afraid.
You know, I've always secretly wanted a moat of my own. Why do these chimps get one while I go without?
Well...
A retired Greyhound has at least some (admittedly limited) potential to be a pet.
Dogs are like that.
A retired chimp, OTOH, is like as not to rip you a poop shute.
Chimps are like that.
So what's wrong with any of that? Somehow just mentioning these items is supposed to indicate that these expendirtues are unjustifable.
Why is that liberatarians come accross as rather uneducated?
Do you feel rather uneducated? Do you wish that maybe you'd kept your thoughts to yourself?
Don't you think that $30,000 a chimp makes us all look like chumps.
Harsh to believe? Allow me to excerpt from http://www.nexusmagazine.com/HIVnotAIDS1.html:
... as Duesberg points out: "During the past decade, more than four hundred thousand AIDS patients have been treated and investigated by a system of five million medical workers and AIDS researchers, none of whom [has] been vaccinated against HIV... But ten years later there is not even one case in the scientific literature of a health worker who ever contracted presumably infectious AIDS from a patient... AIDS is not infectious." Similarly, "nine years after the NIH first started infecting chimpanzees with HIV - over 150 so far at a cost of $40,000 - 50,000 apiece", all "are still healthy".... on 5 May 1998, two US Republicans said they were exploring ways to give a comfortable retirement to 1,500 chimpanzees that were bred for AIDS research. Accompanied by primate expert Jane Goodall, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Jim Greenwood (R-Penn.) said they were working on a bill to set up sanctuaries for the chimps. The chimps, bred in the United States specifically for AIDS research, did not turn out to be the effective models that scientists had anticipated. With no research use, the primates that are man's closest cousins are languishing in cages at an annual cost of US$7.3 million.
Strange tales of politics. Much too bizarre to make up.
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