Thirty years ago the notion crossed through Senator Tom Harkin's head that bee pollen was curing his allergies. Upset that the scientific method was getting in the way of his belief being proven correct, he floated a two-page bill to finance the study of bee pollen by people who would get him the conclusion he wanted. And today, many years later, that two page bill has evolved into the
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which spends $150,000,000 per year on research studies with titles like
Experienced Practitioners Reap Genetic Changes After a Day of Mindfulness Meditation. (They once did a study to see if blasting Yuban coffee into your ass could be an effective home cure for cancer ... all their test subjects ended up dying of untreated cancer.)
Honey and bee pollen are great tools to showcase how the U.S. government successfully evolved from a couple dank offices in a run-down building in a Virginia swamp into the multi-million man workforce it is today. The U.S. should consider replacing the bald eagle with a giant honey bee.