Nature has an interview of neuroscientist J. David Jentsch, Ph.D. who received a recent visitation from the extremist terrorist arm of the Animal Rights movement.
“It was 4 a.m. on Saturday 7 March. I was awakened by a loud bang; then I heard the car alarm go off. I went to the window and saw my car on fire. I ran outside to try to put it out, using a fire extinguisher and a garden hose. It was impossible. The gas tank had exploded. When the windows started exploding, I got out of there. The fire got into the trees. If this was July in fire season, I don’t want to even think about what would have happened. It would have been an enormous fire with many homes threatened. No one was injured.”
As I noted before, this led to the formation of a UCLA chapter of Pro-Test which will be staging a rally in support of animal research on the UCLA campus on April 22. If you are within handy driving distance and can spare the time, please attend. If you are not near UCLA but are on Facebook please consider joining the UCLA Pro-Test Facebook group. One of the primary goals of Pro-Test is to make the supporters of animal research more visible so as to counter the numerically much smaller but more publicly vocal ARA terrorists and supporters. Increasing the membership on Facebook will help with this goal.
Related: The LA Times published a bit on this April 13.
Update: Professor Jentsch on KABC 790 podcast.
Thank You, US Taxpayer!
April 15, 2009
According to the prior head of the NIH, Elias Zerhouni, the NIH budget for the Fiscal Year of 2006 amounted to about $96 per person. The NIH budget from 2005 through that proposed for 2009 increased from $28.5 to $29.5 billion. There were about 138 million US taxpayers in 2007 when the NIH budget was $29 billion so I make this out to be $210 per taxpayer. It isn’t really clear to me if Zerhouni’s “per person” meant per taxpayer or included dependents. So I’ll stick with the $210 number.
I’d encourage you to look at your federal tax bill and divide $210 by that number. For most of you, I assume, this is not going to be a big number. Probably 1-2% of your federal tax obligation at the worst. But still, it is real money that you could be spending elsewhere if we did not have a taxpayer funded research grant system such as we have in the US.
So I thank you on this day of federal tax reckoning, Dear US taxpaying readers.
Thanks for supporting the work that is helping with many issues of personal and public health. From the effects of infectious epidemics, to treatments and cures for various cancers, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular problems, mental and behavioral disorders, traumatic injury…. the list of health issues goes on. Each and every day, teams of scientists around the US and the world are working on new information, diagnostics, treatments and cures which move us incrementally forward on all fronts of public health. These improvements are a lasting legacy that benefit not just current and future American citizens but the entire world population.
Thanks to your $210 per year investment.
DrugMonkey 