More Moolah Wasted As NIH Kills National Childrens Study After $1.3 Billion Spent No wonder were broke: Congress mandated the National Childrens Study as part of the Childrens Health Act of 2000. The idea was to follow 100,000 newborns across the nation in places ranging from urban California to the Florida swamps until they turned 21, and measure how environmental and other factors affected their health. Yet for the past 14 years, all the NIH managed to do was spend $1.3 billion figuring out how to conduct the massive effort and running some pilot experiments. The actual study wasnt scheduled to start officially until some time next year. According to the Investors Business Daily article, the red flags popped up some time ago, and President George W. Bush wanted to pull the plug on the study throughout his presidency and Congress kept funding it. There were problems with the design of the study, which is still incomplete even after over a decade of work. Now the National Institutes of Health pulled the funding all by itself itself after fourteen years and over $1.3 billion spent on nothing. They found that the study was unsustainable. Probably very true. And very creepy that the government was trying to find a way to follow, track and record personal data on 100,000 people from all over the nation. 