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Sen. Rand Paul Says Federal Officials Wasted $4.6 Million Studying Link Between Booze and ER Visits
by Mark Tapcott

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Nov. 25 issued a special fall edition of his annual report on waste and fraud by the federal government, including a $4.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for studying the connection between drinking alcohol and going to the emergency room.

The Kentucky Republican is chairman of the Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management (FSO) Subcommittee for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC).

“So, what findings has the research helped produce? In the abstract for a 2019 paper, researchers assert that ‘countries with high DDP [detrimental drinking pattern] are at higher risk of injury from most causes at a given level of consumption,” Paul’s “Waste Report” stated of the NIH’s project.

By contrast, the project also found that “countries with low restrictiveness of alcohol policy are at higher risk of injury at lower levels of consumption and at higher risk of traffic injuries at high levels of consumption,” the report stated.

“Who would have thought that, when it’s easier to get your hands on alcohol, the injury risk can increase, especially when it comes to vehicle-related injuries?”

In another example of waste by NIH, the report pointed to more than $708,000 spent by the agency on “a nearly five-year project that involves actively addicting its subjects, Zebrafish, to nicotine. The project [is] being conducted at the Queen Mary University of London.”

The project is designed to study links between genetics and addiction and “everybody agrees that nicotine addiction is a problem,” the report stated.

“But you have to be smoking something other than nicotine if you think the solution is to ship American tax dollars abroad to addict Zebrafish to nicotine.”

A third example ...

Continues - paywall w/ some free each month:

https://www.theepochtimes.com/sen-rand-paul-says-federal-officials-wasted-4-6-million-studying-link-between-booze-and-er-visits_3156850.html

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