It has come to the knowledge National Institutes of Health (NIH), the premier health care agency in the realm of USA, is on the verge of spending $178K in order to study drug-abusing Thai prostitutes. What makes the National Institutes of Health take up such an unusual subject? It has been learnt that the agency will try to investigate and also learn the reasons why drug-abusing prostitutes in Thailand have such a high HIV risk as compared to others with like lifestyles. In addition, NIH will make a detailed study of the personal and cultural pressures that have an effect on these sex workers and put them at higher risk.

It has also been learnt that researchers will interview 60 Thai sex workers, including kathoey, who are transgender prostitutes. This NIH research, titled “Substance Use and HIV Risk among Thai Women,” has many up in arms, as it uses taxpayer dollars.
“This really is a complete waste of money and should not be funded by the taxpayer,” David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste, told Fox News.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation. It is divided into two parts: the “Extramural” parts of NIH are responsible for the funding of biomedical research outside of NIH, while the “Intramural” parts of NIH conduct research.

Intramural research is mainly conducted at the main campus in Bethesda in unincorporated Montgomery County, Maryland, and the surrounding communities. The National Institute of Aging and the National Institute on Drug Abuse are located in Baltimore, Maryland, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is in Research Triangle, North Carolina. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases NIAID maintain Rocky Mountain Labs in Hamilton, Montana, with an emphasis on virology.