I read about new medical research all day. It's my job.
Let's cut this short. That's nice. You read about research. The comment you made that I replied to was concerning the FREEDOM TO DO SUCH RESEARCH. People should be free to study insane things, as you put it. And I AGREED. No question. But that's not good enough for you.
You seem to think that NIH has to fund insane research in order for people to be free to do it. You've completely abused the word "free" by starting at "freedom" and winding up at "at taxpayer expense". Your "freedom" to keep and bear arms does not incur a governmental responsibility to buy you a gun so you can be "free", any more than freedom to do research incurs a government responsibility to pay for it, and you've said nothing that would even begin to argue otherwise.
Nobody in the industry or in academic medical research believes that private investment could fund the kind of research the NIH does.
That's insane. I'm in academia (not medical, but medical has no special status when it comes to having their hand out for grant money) and I fully expect condom companies to spend their own money developing new kinds of condoms. That's private industry funding precisely the kind of "research" that NIH has become involved with. You even pointed out that Bill Gates is dumping $100M into such projects, and that's "private investment" writ large.
And when it comes to why fat girls can't get dates, or whether drunk men accost women, I don't care if NIH is the only place that could or would fund such ridiculous research, they shouldn't be doing it. If YOU want to know why a fat girl can't get a date, you pay for it. If you care which hand chimpanzees use to fling their poo (right-handed, BTW) that's nice, but it's hardly worth spending taxpayer money on. It's a waste of NIH money when they're complaining they don't have enough to fund important research. That makes them hypocrites as well as money-wasters.
I note that the only research you chose to defend was the ass condoms, which is a pretty clear admission that you cannot defend the other examples. Yet, you insult me when I point out the wastes and won't accept them as valid, valuable, fundable research projects. Hmmm. It appears you think NIH can do no wrong when it hands out money, and that NIH has to hand it out or people aren't free anymore. You cherry pick one example of money wasting research and try to defend it as part of the overall "AIDS research" (when it is not research into curing AIDS but into commercial development of a commercial product that a commercial company could do just as well), but the others you cannot defend at all.
I also meet people who believe that the government can't do anything,
I think they call this a "straw man" argument. Since you can't show where I've said anything close to that, your attempt at insulting me with the statement fails even the briefest sniff test.
So I realize that you believe the government is wasting money on NIH research, no facts will convince you otherwise,
You've provided exactly zero new information, so why should I have changed my mind? I agreed with your statement that people should be free to do insane research, but you've not said anything that would show that the government has to fund insane research. "It's AIDS!" Well, that's nice, but most of the examples weren't. "They had a reason." Sorry, I know how grants are written and everyone comes up with a "reason" their research is important and critical and vital and crucial and novel and new and should be funded. That's the grant writing process. Some universities run workshops on how to do that; what key words to use in your proposals to improve the chance of them being approved. You can expect EVERY grant request to contain a plethora of reasons why it should be funded, but not every grant request will actually contain research that should be funded. The people who write the proposals think so, but they have an inherent bias -- or didn't you know that?
I thought you had maybe a glimmer of willingness to consider ideas outside your preconceived beliefs. But now I see you don't.
Yeah, and now you have to resort to the "if I can't convince you I'm right, you must be stupid" style of argument. That's an admission of your own failure, not mine. Since you've stooped to insult in place of argument, I will write here what I was so sorely tempted to write above: "if you want to find out why fat girls can't get a date, you pay for it. She's YOUR sister, after all." There, that felt really good, but it wasn't really productive. Since you've left the arena on productive discussion by taking the insult path, I think it's fair to give back what you're giving me.