Hookers and Booze
The NIH just funded a new $2.6 million grant for a study in China to look at drunk prostitutes:
Researchers will visit 100 houses of ill repute — a whole hamlet of harlots — to collect data on 700 prostitutes and 150 pimps and madams, referred to as “gatekeepers” in the study’s sterile abstract.
Phase one of the study is intended to research “alcohol use/abuse and related sexual risk among FSWs in China,” according to the abstract — a cold hard look at why prostitutes engage in dangerous sex while drunk.
Now I’m all for drinking and sex, but is this study really worth it? Fox News doesn’t seem to think so. I know many people who read this site work in research, so what do you guys think? Does this kind of research contribute to the “greater good?”
May 14th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
man if only the government wasn’t in the business of making these kinds of decisions. Is YOUR research worth it to contribute to the “greater good”? what and who is the greater good?
May 15th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I am anxiously awaiting those that like to tackle the media for having a political agenda. Why wasn’t this a story in November when the grant was funded? Is it because it’s more fun to “fool” people to believe that this is more evidence of wasteful spending by the Obama administration?
Anyway, from a research perspective, I can see why we are studying Chinese sex workers… It could have potential impact for finding effective ways to encourage behaviors that prevent the spread of disease in high risk groups. Why China? Well, go ahead and write a grant to study these groups in America…. We would prefer to believe that we don’t have these groups here and if we were to find people in these groups, they would be immediately under arrest.
May 15th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
The greater good is apparently whatever the NIH thinks it is.
May 15th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
According to the speaker in my psychology of violence class last week, 25% of women are raped or sexually assaulted during their time at college in the US, and about 96% of those incidents involve alchohol. You don’t htink there might be some public benefit to understanding the link between drinking and risky sexual behavior? As Jamie says, it’s going to be almost impossible to find a large and reliable nough study group in the US, so we get the data where it’s easily and cheaply available.