Rand Paul: Studying sexual tendency of quails on cocaine is waste of government spending
You can learn a lot from studying birds and every year government funded research does just that.
But it’s one study in particular Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has been railing against for years.
“$356,000 was spent of your money studying whether or not Japanese quail are more sexually promiscuous on cocaine,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in a speech on the Senate Floor.
According to scientists, the effects of drugs like cocaine have similar brain effects in quails as in humans. The study looked at behavior patterns while on the drug and found “repeated exposure to cocaine during sexual activity may increase sexual motivation which may, in turn, may lead to high risk sexual activities.”
It’s a conclusion Sen. Paul calls predictable.
“Common sense would have told us one that cocaine is probably not good for you and that cocaine might make you do things that you wouldn’t have done otherwise had you not been on cocaine,” he said in a recent interview.
In the 2018 spending bill, the National Institutes of Health got more than 37 billion dollars - a $3 billion increase from the year before.
According to its website, NIH is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, and its mission is to “enhance health, lengthen life and reduce illness and disability.”
For Sen. Paul and others on Capitol Hill who complain the government wastes taxpayer money and in turn has to then borrow from countries like China, it’s an expense that’s simply not necessary right now.
“When the government starts running a surplus I’ll quit complaining so much,” he said.
Sen. Rand Paul hasn’t gotten much support in his calls to cut back. Even though his party is in the majority in both the House and Senate, Republicans so far have increased spending by about $300 billion.
