Iread this story at CNSNews.com and I said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Here’s the headline: “Feds Will Spend $400,000 to Study Drinking and Sex Habits of Homosexuals in Argentina.” Do what?!?

Here we are in the midst of a deep recession and our government is going to spend nearly a half-million dollars to study homosexuals in another country? Yes, unfortunately, it’s true.

The study, which is already being conducted, is sending researchers to six bars in Buenos Aires to interview patrons and bar staff to discover what it is about their bars that may encourage risky behavior. Who cares?

I know, I know. The whole thing is about AIDS prevention, but again, who cares? I hate to be so crass, but it’s not like we don’t know how AIDS is spread. It’s primarily spread among homosexuals and intravenous drug users. We fully know how to prevent it already. Stop the risky behavior! Oh, no. Somehow it’s not their fault. Maybe they just don’t know the danger they’re facing when they pick up some strange man at a bar.

The United States government wants to target bars in the U.S. that promote risky behavior with AIDS-prevention campaigns. Even if this were a good use of taxpayer money, I guess it didn’t make sense to do the research here in America. They had to go to Argentina.

I’m really getting sick and tired of this nanny state. If someone wants to drink himself silly then go have sex with a bunch of men it’s none of the government’s concern. Now, they’ll tell you that it is because their job is to prevent the spread of disease. No, their job is to prevent the spread of diseases that we can catch through casual contact. We know how you get AIDS and anyone now who engages in that risky behavior certainly has calculated the risk. If they get AIDS they get AIDS. It’s their choice.

Smoking’s bad for you. No kidding. Binge drinking can be hazardous to your health. Really? That’s why we have warning labels for everything. Here are a couple: “DO NOT put any person in this washer.” “Do not hold the wrong end of a chainsaw.”

Do you realize why they put these warning labels on products? Because some stupid idiot at one time did these things!

There’s something called “natural selection.” It was one of Darwin’s theories that organisms that best adapted to their environment would survive. Those that didn’t, wouldn’t. In a sense you could argue that warning labels prevent natural selection from taking place.

Sure, the government has a place in protecting us from unknown danger but they have to stop this business of protecting us from ourselves. What spurs all these warning labels are lawsuits, or at least the threat of one. I wonder how long it will be (and it may have already happened) before someone who contracted AIDS sues the bar because something about it made him want to engage in risky behavior.

The government?and the media?seems to focus on the more sensational aspects of disease. AIDS has long been the leading recipient of taxpayer research dollars yet it’s not anywhere near the top 10 of American killers. We’ve completely lost our sense of proportion. Look at the latest swine flu panic. The deaths related to this latest flu have been minimal, yet that’s all we hear about. Your garden-variety flu kills about 36,000 people every year. Where’s the panic with that? Yes, we want to be properly warned, but it’s time for the government to go after the real killers.

Phil Valentine is an author and nationally syndicated radio talk show host with Westwood One. For more of his commentary and articles, visit philvalentine.com.