TimCallahan
Philosopher
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2009
- Messages
- 6,293
Perhaps I'm overstating things in the title of this thread. However, the effect of the government shutdown on biomedical research is horrendous, as noted here. Here's and example from the site (bolding added):
Unlike most other government medical researchers, this scientist has been allowed to visit the laboratory to feed rodents used in research by the scientist’s group. Many if not most of the rodents will soon be euthanized.
It’s not a matter of feeding the animals and cleaning their cages. These animals used for research are used in intricate experiments, involving treatments and collection of data performed by hundreds of individual scientists with each project. An animal caretaker can’t continue that.
Given that, you can imagine what has to happen. You cannot maintain colonies for no reason. It’s very expensive — and if they’re useless for research, what are you going to do? And mice and rats breed like crazy. An exponential expansion of the population that will rapidly fill all the cages.
Considering that the section I've put in boldface, I would have to assume that most medical researchers are not being allowed in to feed the rodents, which have, as such, probably died of thirst or starvation by now. So, at the behest of tea-bagger jerk-offs House Republicans, who benefit, as I did when I had my bypass surgery, from medical research, are derailing biomedical research and wasting all the tax-payer dollars that have already been spent on these programs that are now being derailed.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at this, since it goes hand in hand with climate change denial and such grotesque spectacles as the late Dixie Lee Ray, saying, several years ago on KKLA, our local fundamentalist radio station, the cars emit hydrocarbons which, as she characterized it, "are those wonderful-smelling things given off by pine trees." Pinene, a volatile compound given off by pine trees, is indeed a hydrocarbon. So are the plastics polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene. Of course, no one is asserting that these are given off in automobile exhaust. So Ray used a technical truth to hide a lie. She also asserted that most of the animals on the Endangered Species List were bugs and snails and the like. This was a flat-out lie. The overwhelming majority of animals on the Endangered Species list - over 80% - are vertebrates. The majority - over 60% - are not only vertebrates, but warm-blooded as well, i.e. mammals and birds.
Given this kind of crap, coupled with support of creationism and antagonism toward evolutionary theory, I suppose cavalier disregard for the impact their little temper tantrum is having on medical research should be no surprise.
Unlike most other government medical researchers, this scientist has been allowed to visit the laboratory to feed rodents used in research by the scientist’s group. Many if not most of the rodents will soon be euthanized.
It’s not a matter of feeding the animals and cleaning their cages. These animals used for research are used in intricate experiments, involving treatments and collection of data performed by hundreds of individual scientists with each project. An animal caretaker can’t continue that.
Given that, you can imagine what has to happen. You cannot maintain colonies for no reason. It’s very expensive — and if they’re useless for research, what are you going to do? And mice and rats breed like crazy. An exponential expansion of the population that will rapidly fill all the cages.
Considering that the section I've put in boldface, I would have to assume that most medical researchers are not being allowed in to feed the rodents, which have, as such, probably died of thirst or starvation by now. So, at the behest of tea-bagger jerk-offs House Republicans, who benefit, as I did when I had my bypass surgery, from medical research, are derailing biomedical research and wasting all the tax-payer dollars that have already been spent on these programs that are now being derailed.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at this, since it goes hand in hand with climate change denial and such grotesque spectacles as the late Dixie Lee Ray, saying, several years ago on KKLA, our local fundamentalist radio station, the cars emit hydrocarbons which, as she characterized it, "are those wonderful-smelling things given off by pine trees." Pinene, a volatile compound given off by pine trees, is indeed a hydrocarbon. So are the plastics polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene. Of course, no one is asserting that these are given off in automobile exhaust. So Ray used a technical truth to hide a lie. She also asserted that most of the animals on the Endangered Species List were bugs and snails and the like. This was a flat-out lie. The overwhelming majority of animals on the Endangered Species list - over 80% - are vertebrates. The majority - over 60% - are not only vertebrates, but warm-blooded as well, i.e. mammals and birds.
Given this kind of crap, coupled with support of creationism and antagonism toward evolutionary theory, I suppose cavalier disregard for the impact their little temper tantrum is having on medical research should be no surprise.
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