Pundits, bloggers and others with way too much time on their hands are having a field day with the revelation that more than $70,000 in federal stimulus money will be spent to study monkeys on cocaine.
Reader Jeff Buchanan, who closely monitors monkey business in Winston-Salem, N.C., brought this hot-button issue and the surrounding brouhaha to my attention. I immediately stopped what I was doing, which was reading Jeff's e-mail, and summoned my crack research team (Google).
"I want everything you can find about monkeys on coke!" I yelled unnecessarily since I was in an office by myself. "And I want it on my desk in 20 minutes!"
A couple of days later, here's what I found: The Department of Health and Human Services awarded $71,623 to Wake Forest University for a project titled "Effect of Cocaine Self-Administration on Metabotropic Glutamate Systems."
In other words, monkeys on coke.
"Research into the role of neurotransmitter systems in the reinforcing effects of cocaine has traditionally focused on monoamines," reads the project summary. "However recent studies in rodents indicate a strong involvement of glutamatergic mechanisms, particularly during abstinence... We propose to test these hypotheses by measuring the concentrations of metabotropic glutamate receptors in monkeys previously studied."
In other words, monkeys on coke.
The Civitas Institute, a conservative think tank in Raleigh, N.C., named the monkeys-on-coke study as top dog on its list of the 10 Worst Federal Stimulus Projects in North Carolina.
I respectfully disagree.
Finally, we as a society are ready to deal openly with the dark secret of monkey substance abuse. No longer can we ignore addicted apes, messed-up macaques and baked baboons.
How bad is it? Consider this:
-- As I reported last year in one of my numerous monkey-related columns, Travis, the Connecticut chimp who brutally attacked and ripped off a woman's face, had allegedly downed a Xanax-laced cup of tea prior to the mauling.
Travis, according to CNN, "was known to walk around town, sometimes without a leash, also liked to surf on the Internet and was able to change the TV channel with a remote" and would sometimes guzzle wine from a stemmed glass. Xanax + wine + monkey = bad outcome.
-- According to the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, Zhora the chimp, a resident the Rostov Zoo of Moscow, has been sent to an undisclosed rehab facility for an addiction to booze and cigarettes.
"We asked visitors not to give him (alcohol and smokes), but it was all in vain," said Rostov Zoo deputy head Hope Yevtushenko.
A Feb. 28 article on the Web site ninemsn.com said Zhora "screamed and pestered passing zoo visitors to give him liquor."
-- Clyde, the lovable orangutan in the 1978 action-comedy "Every Which Way But Loose," chugged a lot of Clint Eastwood's beer and punched bikers in the face.
-- King Kong took steroids. (Admittedly, this is only speculation on my part.)
Why don't we see monkeys as central characters in TV shows like "B.J and the Bear" anymore? It's because the devil-may-care '70s and '80s showed that monkeys were particularly susceptible to the Hollywood lifestyle - fast cars, loose women and piles of cocaine. When they hit the fast lane, they showed even less restraint than Charlie Sheen at a bachelor party.
The Wake Forest study does have its drawbacks, such as the possibility that coke-fueled monkeys will escape from the lab and embark on drug-addled killing sprees, but the potential benefit outweighs the risk.
If we can help just one monkey with a monkey on its back, it will be worth every cent of that $71,623 in federal stimulus money.
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