Rats on Drugs

We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.

                                                           —Thomas Edison

 

FLASH: THIS JUST IN! Rats can become drug addicts. Researchers at France’s National Institute of Health and Medicine in league with British and American teams have discovered that rats exhibit the same compulsive drive for cocaine that people do. Until now, scientists have been able to prove that rats will take drugs, even eagerly, but not that they’re actually addicted.

 “ What confers susceptibility to experimenting and trying drugs may be quite different than what changes your brain and leads to addiction,” explained Terry Robinson, a University of Michigan neuroscientist.

 “There’s some fundamental shift between casual drug abuse and addiction,” added David Shurtleff, chief of basic neurological research at the US National Institute on Drug Abuse. “The rats keep trying to get cocaine even when each hit comes with an electric shock to their tiny little feet.”

 Or in layman terms…they like it!!

     Now I don’t know about you but I find this fascinating for two reasons.

Number one: If you locked a human in a cage with nothing to do, and suddenly started giving him free cocaine you might be rewarded with the same results. The human might actually return to the cocaine bin even though you shock their tiny feet when they do.

You could determine that yes a human in a cage will do free drugs.

Number two: Another fascinating fact has become apparent. Since George Bush has taken office many of our scientists have nothing to do. With the present administration’s refusal to allow stem-cell research, which could benefit millions from spinal cord injuries to Alzheimer’s patients, and his removal of millions of dollars from the alternative energy research programs our scientists are reduced to dolling out free cocaine to rats then “shocking their tiny feet” when they go for it.

 

Now let’s examine the condition of the world today. Let us justify killing thousands of people in the name of democracy when in actuality it just may boil down to a desperate bid to insure a limited flow of more oil. If you think this isn’t so, then why didn’t we attack say, Malawi, there’s no democracy there. They have had the same despot ruler for 40 years, twice as long as Saddam, and no pesky Army to deal with. The money we saved in attacking Malawi we could have bought every rodent in this country his own bag of cocaine. I’ll tell you why we’re not interested in Malawi’s political agenda; their main export is tropical fish…not oil.

 So why put our best minds together to build billions of dollars worth of weapons to kill innocent people that stand in our way of oil reserves that are a temporary fix to the problem? Why cut our programs of alternative energy programs by 80 percent, which actually could have employed these rat-shocking, weapon-building brains to come up with a solution that would benefit everybody on earth, instead of blowing up everyone that doesn’t think like us, and shocking coke-rattled rodents.

 The truth of the matter, according to the one scientist not involved in drugging rats, David Greene of the US Geological Survey Dept. is this; the world consumes 80 million barrels of oil per day, or 25 billion barrels per year, of which the United States slurps up one quarter of that even though we have just 5 percent of the population. Iraq holds 112 billion barrels or about a four year supply. At this rate of consumption, world oil reserve production will peak by 2016 then start dwindling. So the Bush Administration has sacrificed 1000 young Americans, and ten thousand Iraqi’s over the quest for oil, which will essentially start disappearing in a dozen years. Apparently not comprehending these figures Bush’s tax code offers a $2000.00 consumer credit for hybrid car owners and a potential deduction of $100,000.00 for people who buy the largest SUVs for business use.

Regardless of the loss of life, we have spent 80 billion after Iraq’s oil, and allocated simply $16.3 million to be divided amongst 162 renewable energy projects. These projects are as diverse as alternative fueled vehicles to energy efficient government buildings.

There are only three grants allocated to solar power, which receive around $35,000 a piece from Bush’s administration.

 So let’s do the math here. My limited experience with cocaine is that it is a very expensive drug, costing 100 per gram or around $35,000 for one pound of the stuff.  If three major institutions and who knows how many scientists are involved in dolling out coke to rats then it is safe to assume we are investing more on our ‘rats on drugs’ program than we are on solar power research.

 Now I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I figure the sun will be around long after we’ve sucked every drop of oil from the earth. Unlike oil it offers a free, constant, non-polluting source of energy world wide, and non-political. In other words we don’t have to kill everybody in a particular country to introduce ‘democracy’ to avail ourselves to their energy source.

 Another thing gives one pause for thought, what happens once these institutions get all these rats hooked on drugs? I mean a rat high on coke is capable of practically anything I should think. Aren’t rats obnoxious enough already? I say it’s time we lobby Bush to withhold simply one pound of the disco dust from these voracious rodents and put it towards solar research, in effect doubling the alternative energy budget and just maybe saving the world from a dark, polluted world run amok with drug addicted rodents.