Rosenberg: The researcher who received $3.6 million in the last decade to study the effects of heroin, crystal meth, and Angel Dust on menstruating monkeys?
Bellotti: Yes. And, the public has the right to know about Ohio State University Professor George Billman who has spent $1.9 million forcing dogs to run on treadmills, inducing heart attacks, and then killing the dogs. His astonishing revelation? Exercise might be good for you. Then there's the University of Wisconsin where researchers spent $2.5 million drilling holes into cats' skulls, placing wire coils in their eyes and deafening them and starving them to death. According to internal university records, the cat experimenters admitted that the purpose of these taxpayer-funded experiments was to "keep up a productive publication record that ensures our constant funding."
Rosenberg: What? No tax-payers or scientists who aren't in on the money could defend this kind of thing. How does cruel and stupid government-funded research like this persist?
Bellotti: What happens is the research grows, becomes entrenched and produces its own constituents and lobbyists. The universities and researchers who get this money think its theirs not ours and that they are entitled to it. There are huge incentives and the programs grow bigger each year.
Rosenberg: Sounds like scientific "pork"!
Bellotti: Yes. The universities and researchers are given a blank check and do not even have to defend the research or cite anything of value it has produced. For years, mice were considered miniature human beings and now we know that most mouse-based research has no applicability to humans and has been pretty worthless.
Rosenberg: National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis S. Collins always professes his spirituality and God-centeredness. Yet millions of animals die under his watch. NIH's new brain initiative will only increase the toll.
Bellotti: NIH projects including the new brain initiative are investments of public money. We are entitled to a return on our investments. What was spent, what is being done to animals, what do tax-payers get out of this? These are the questions the White Coat Waste Project will highlight.
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