If the NIH ever offers you a massage, don’t take it.
More than a dozen lucky rabbits were given Swedish massages four times a day, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, as part of a study to figure out whether massage can help recovery times after strenuous exercise — a practice Sen. Tom Coburn says makes a mockery of federal spending.
The rabbit massages are one of the hundred wasteful products Mr. Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, identified in his latest edition of the Wastebook, an annual compendium of the ridiculous and outrageous items in government spending, which he is releasing on Wednesday.
Other highlights included the National Science Foundation paying academics to teach monkeys to gamble, government sponsorship of a children’s play about brain-eating zombies and a first-person combat shooting video game the Army developed — but which intelligence officials fear terrorists could use to train their own recruits. Indeed, Hezbollah has adapted the game’s design to train suicide martyrs.
Mr. Coburn’s investigators also found scientists putting mountain lions, monkeys, rats and cows on treadmills. That’s reminiscent of a previous famous item Mr. Coburn spotted that involved sticking shrimp on a treadmill to try to see if tired shrimp were less healthy.
….Taxpayers paid $387,000 for the two-year study, which concluded that other studies were right, and massage seemed to help in recovery — though it wasn’t clear that rabbit physiology could be extrapolated to humans. The rabbits were euthanized at the end of the study, Mr. Coburn’s report says.
More at the Washington Times
Not contributed to a food bank? — let the poor eat cake — ri’c’heer folks – step right up and get your food stamps – if it weren’t for Obama da magnificent – you’d STARVE — not even a school lunch program — or some tony French restaurant in DC — I am sure the Senate could spend a couple hours decussing which one was worthy of their (YOUR) ‘charity’- dam government
And who gets the grants? CRONIES!!!
Wasting Federal tax dollars is a longstanding Democrat tradition.
Run for office and get your nose into the feedbag.
A rising tide lifts all lobbyists.
Much of the “research” done by the Centers for Disease Control has nothing to do with controlling disease.
Where IS that ebola vaccine? Just asking.
But oh boy are our playgrounds safer not that kids can’t play tag anymore.
Or climb on jungle gyms. Or swing on swings.
We have nothing to fear but Government itself.
@mathman: Most of these total crap research grants go to Universities — ’nuff said!
PETA? Hello, you there?