NIH claims it has no money for Ebola vaccine

House lawmakers grilled CDC and NIH representatives yesterday in a hearing on the ongoing Ebola crisis. Democrats on the committee repeated over and over that we would have an Ebola vaccine if it weren’t for budget cuts. Even the NIH Director Francis Collins said, “Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready.”

So just what does the NIH spend its money on? A Washington Free Beacon report found $39,643,352 of spending on questionable research that could have gone to developing a vaccine.

The agency has spent $2,873,440 trying to figure out why lesbians are obese, and$466,642 on why fat girls have a tough time getting dates. Another $2,075,611 was spent encouraging old people to join choirs.

Millions have gone to “text message interventions,” including a study where researchers sent texts to drunks at the bar to try to get them to stop drinking. The project received an additional grant this year, for a total of $674,590.

The NIH is also texting older African Americans with HIV ($372,460), HIV and drug users in rural areas ($693,000), HIV smokers ($763,519), pregnant smokers ($380,145), teen moms ($243,839), and meth addicts ($360,113). Text message interventions to try to get obese people to lose weight have cost $2,707,067.

The NIH’s research on obesity has led to spending $2,101,064 on wearable insoles and buttons that can track a person’s weight, and $374,670 to put on fruit and vegetable puppet shows for preschoolers.

Remember this the next time Nancy Pelosi says, “The cupboard is bare. There is nothing left to cut.”