Sen. Joni Ernst is sick of the taxpayer-funded monkey business.
In recognition of National Monkey Day, the Iowa Republican on Saturday shined a light on some unique ways Uncle Sam tests the furry primates on the taxpayer dime.
Ms. Ernst said the National Institute of Health has blown tens of millions of taxpayer’s income on, among other things, “simian stoners,” “drunk junkie monkeys,” and “gambling coke head monkeys.”
She highlighted studies involving feeding monkeys THC edibles to see how it impacts pregnancy and having monkeys simultaneously use cocaine, nicotine and booze to analyze levels of addiction. In another test, according to White Coat Waste, an anti-animal research group, “monkeys’ skulls are cracked open, horseradish and other toxins are injected into their brains, and they are addicted to cocaine and forced to gamble for water.”
Other studies focused on same-sex sexual behavior in primates and cross-eyed monkeys. More than $60 million of taxpayer money was spent to maintain “an island off South Carolina that currently houses 3,379 monkeys for use in taxpayer-funded experiments,” according to Ms. Ernst.
Ms. Ernst called the federally-funded monkey research “totally bananas.”
“For Washington, wasting your tax dollars is as much fun as a barrel of monkeys,” she said. “Taxpayers might be saying, ‘not my circus, not my monkeys,’ but sadly, it is their money!”
The National Institute for Health did not respond to a request for comment.
However, government agencies have pushed back against such criticism in the past.
Officials insist they are responsible stewards of taxpayers’ money and say it is not surprising that there are disagreements over the quality or wisdom of some research projects. Others say that studies that look weird outside the world of science tend to serve a valuable purpose.
The big spending on cringe-inducing experiments, however, is getting scrutiny from fiscal hawks like Ms. Ernst on Capitol Hill, where there’s a renewed focus on federal deficits and the $36 trillion national debt.
Ms Ernst has long flagged what she sees as egregious examples of wasteful government spending, handing out monthly “Squeal Awards” to the federal agencies and departments for being the worst offenders.
The award is named after Ms. Ernst’s 2014 Senate campaign promise in which she revealed she’d castrated pigs on the farm where she grew up and vowed to make Washington squeal, too.
She plans to use that experience as the newly minted chair of the Senate DOGE Caucus that is set to help Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy lead President-elect Donald Trump’s new commission, the Department of Government Efficiency, to find $2 trillion in federal spending cuts.
Ms. Ernst has shared $1 trillion in potential cuts with Mr. Musk and Mr. Ramaswamy.
Her wish list spanned a range of areas.
It included clawing back spending on “silly science” programs that, among other things, include a National Science Foundation test that involved putting a shrimp on an underwater treadmill to determine how sickness impacted their performance.
The tests Ms. Ernst cited on National Monkey Day produced various conclusions.
In assessing the effects of THC on a monkey pregnancy, the study said, “The long-term consequences of these findings are unknown but suggest that prenatal THC exposure may affect cardiovascular development in offspring.”
“Prenatal cannabis use is increasing, and despite the public health relevance, there is limited safety data regarding its impact on offspring cardiovascular health outcomes,” it said.
Meanwhile, the findings of the cocaine, nicotine and alcohol experiment “found that the co-use of nicotine enhanced the potency and reinforcing strength of cocaine under several conditions in monkeys.”
“We also noted that females showed greater effects of nicotine + cocaine compared with male monkeys,” the report said. “Overall, these data provide novel insights into the behavioral interactions between nicotine and cocaine and suggest that different treatment interventions for [Cocaine Use Disorder] may be required in a population that also uses nicotine.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.