Congress wants to pick and choose the projects NIH researches?
Toomey's amendment would have instructed NIH to shut off and redirect funds for four sexual behavior studies: a study on San Francisco's Asian prostitutes and masseuses, a study of sexual habits of older men, a study on mood arousal and sexual risk taking, and a study on American Indian and Alaskan transgendered individuals. The four grants total around $1.5 million in FY 2004.
Ok, those sound, um, off-the wall. Consider this, however:
Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), ranking democrat on the appropriations committee, recalled how years ago his former democratic colleague, Sen. William Proxmire, created the "Golden Fleece Awards" to ridicule scientific research studies that appeared to be worthless wastes of government funding. "One year he made a whole lot of fun of a study on Polish pigs. They had a field day with it—funny name, strange-sounding grant. Well, guess what? That study led to the development of a new blood pressure medicine which millions of people use today," Obey said."The one thing I came to understand very quickly is that the day that we politicize NIH research… is the day we will ruin science research in this country. We have no business making political judgments about those kinds of issues," he said.
Be sure to read the Golden Fleece link; it's quite a history of the awards, including lawsuits, stupid science, and equally stupid Senatorial tricks.
Posted by Linkmeister at July 14, 2003 02:34 PMA study of the sexual habits of older man would be interesting, actually...
I hope they don't stop the funding for that. You never know what can be gleaned from research...
Thanks for the look-see on this issue! While on vacation, I wasn't looking very much at newspapers, so I completely missed it.
Efforts to politicize research are, unfortunately, par for the course in this Republifundie bizarro world we're inhabiting at the moment. Say what you will about Proxmire's Golden Fleece days -- while he made politcal hay by lampooning federally-funded scientific studies, he never lifted a finger to defund any of them or to exert any overt influence on science funding decisions. Such actions would have been inconceivable to Proxmire, or to any other legislator of the day. I suppose the ascent of Newt presages the change from a responsible, collegial, bipartisan legislature to the crazed thuggery running rampant in the halls of today's Congress.
Posted by: N in Seattle at July 19, 2003 01:51 PMI need to figure out how to put the search function into this blog; I've mentioned this before, usually in conjunction with an article from a scientific journal griping about the ideological persuasion of some commission members. Going back to find them is hard.
Posted by: Linkmeister at July 19, 2003 02:40 PM