Dear Rep Tim Walberg: I was saddened to see that the Framingham Heart Study in Massachusetts will be forced to cease providing examinations, and lay off staff, due to budget cuts brought about by the sequester - bu.edu/today/2013/framingham-heart-study-carries-on-despite-budget-cuts/ This may seem like an odd concern to bring to the attention of a representative from Tipton, Michigan, but by means of illustration, I will speak about my grandfather. My grandfather, Rudolph Schmerberg, was a lifelong Republican, the kind of rural Washtenaw County lifelong Republican common in your district. He was nervous about the radical influence of Ann Arbor, despit.e being a proud University of Michigan alum who sent his sons there to study (and who held season football tickets for decades). He sold real estate, served as president of the Rotary Club of Saline, was a Commander of American Legion Post 46, and was elected, as a Republican, to a two year term as Pittsfield Township supervisor. He probably thought that his taxes were always too high, and that government was always doing too much with his money. I say “was a lifelong Republican” and “probably thought” because Rudolph Schmerberg died in 1996, when I was 12. Grandpa Rudy died from a bad heart, which brought about a series of heart attacks and strokes. I know he smoked for a long period of his life; he wasn’t a teetotaler, and he probably had other risk factors (lack of exercise, a hearty German diet, genetics) that predisposed him to heart disease. I don’t have the best recollection the details, again, I was 12. Notice the term “risk factors” in the previous paragraph. I have no special medical training. I know nothing about medicine other than “take two aspirin/tylenol/ibuprofen.” Yet I can use the term risk factors in a letter to a former pastor (please forgive me if my assumption that you have no special medical training is in error) and we can each know what I am talking about. The identification of risk factors for cardiovascular disease is so ingrained into our culture that nearly everyone knows what is meant when someone says that a certain behavior is a risk factor for heart disease. The Framingham Heart Study coined the term “risk factor.” The joint project between the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Boston University has been studying heart disease since 1948, and has changed the way America thinks about health care. Aside from discovering the concept of risk factors for cardiovascular disease, the Framingham Heart Study first made the link between smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, and many other factors and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. As I said, I have no particular training in medicine, and am not the best person to educate you on the Framingham Heart Study; their website - framinghamheartstudy.org - contains information far beyond the scope of this letter. I am not seeking to educate you on the merits of this study as it applies to all of America. I do want you to know that it is the type of program that impacts me and my family. My father takes a statin drug to manage his cholesterol. I expect that I will take one at some point in my life as well. I hope that the pace of medical research can keep pace with the slowly increasing risk of heart attack and stroke that my father and I are subject to. That research was in its infancy when Grandpa Rudy was making choices about his health care, and came too late to reduce his risk of an early death. I never asked Grandpa Rudy about politics, taxation, or any such matters, because I only knew him when I was a child. I can only speculate what his feelings would be on this particular study, and whether or not it should receive government funding. I do know that he donated his body to the University of Michigan Medical Center upon his death, so that it could be studied, and advance the medical knowledge of the world. I sincerely doubt he would want the effectiveness of this study decreased. When I look to your website’s section listing your positions on health care, I see links to articles touting your opposition to “the President’s Job-Killing Health Care Law,” and a statement that individual Americans need to “take control of their health care decisions.” As a consequence of the sequester, not the Affordable Care Act, vital research jobs are being lost. The Framingham Health Study, with a 65-year history, studying over 10,000 individuals, is not something that individual Americans can take control of. This is the type of program that requires government support and funding. Your stated position on the sequestration, quoting from a WTVB-AM Coldwater news article is that “the sky isn’t falling as the Obama administration proclaim[s] and the eventual impact of the cuts will prove them to be liars” - beta.wtvbam/news/articles/2013/feb/21/walberg-in-favor-of-sequestration/. It appears quite clear that you favor the sequester, considering that statement and that the article is titled “Walberg in Favor of Sequestration,” but if I’m off-base, please let me know. I write to you about my Grandpa Rudy and The Framingham Heart Study in the hopes that you might make some connections between budget numbers and lives affected. I know that Massachusetts may seem far away from Tipton, but I firmly believe that the money that goes to that study saves lives. My grandfather was born too soon to benefit from much of its research, but my father and I have been lucky enough to gain knowledge from its discoveries. I know that you and I have very different views on who is to blame for the sequester. At this point, I am not asking you to agree with me on that. What I am asking you to do is recognize that the cuts you speak so blithely of have actual impact. I have not mentioned the millions of dollars Michigan is losing in early childhood education, home heating assistance, nutrition education, immunization, employment services, research grants at the University of Michigan &c., as your previous statements show that those are just numbers to you. I do not directly benefit from the programs I described above. However, I do, my father does, and I wish with all of my heart that my grandfather could have benefited from the research conducted in Framingham. If you think Boston University is full of “liars,” or my worry that I or my father may suffer heart disease is tantamount to claiming “the sky is falling,” I hope you will explain how. Sincerely, Luke Schmerberg
Posted on: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 16:02:33 +0000