Please, dont vote for this man. Or his friends. boston/news/politics/2014/10/17/ebola-worries-under-president-romney-says-scott-brown-did-get-that-from-trump/VOdvvfXuUwJU4I3zRdraEI/story.html?p1=Topofpage:Carousel_sub_headline I have spent much of the past two weeks in conferences coincidentally attended by many scientists on and near the front line of research into infectious diseases like Ebola. Most if not not all of them receive at least some of their funding or paycheck from the US govt, either through NIH, CDC or the military. These people have been working in disease research their entire careers, and have seen what happens when budget cuts (like the recent sequester) cut into research that is funded by NIH and the military. And these folks are as diverse a group as you will find when it comes to politics, but they leave their politics at the door when theyre studying threats like Ebola. Biomedical research is something that requires years or decades of continuous work and study before MAYBE producing results. Sometimes the results are completely unexpected, leading in directions not previously considered and occasionally leading to breakthroughs that affect us all in a positive way. To suggest that Mitt Romney as President would have prevented the current Ebola outbreak (a term I use lightly considering we have FOUR cases in the US and ONE death) is laughable at best. The budget cuts around the sequester hit NIH hard, and came on the heels of previous budget reductions that eliminated or slowed a lot of cutting edge research. Scott Brown fails to tell us how Romney wouldve prevented these cuts, cuts which DID slow Ebola vaccine research that may have otherwise allowed us to have a proven vaccine at the ready today. And to make Scott Brown look credible, along comes this gem: freebeacon/issues/39643352-worth-of-nih-funding-that-could-have-gone-to-the-ebola-vaccine/ Picking out what an author considers questionable research (by definition, suggesting it is questionable leaves open the possibility that it is not) totaling a whopping 3% of NIHs grant budget, the author makes no mention/suggestion of HOW that money coulda/woulda helped further Ebola vaccine research instead. Cutting the budget of the worlds largest source of funding for such research affects all of us, maybe Ebola research gets the headlines but it takes money from research into Alzheimers, Parkinsons, lung cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and countless others that affect ALL of us. Ebola and other infectious diseases along with all the other health risks we face, risks that folks at NIH and other agencies spent their careers trying to understand, shouldnt be reduced to political campaign rhetoric or silly articles like these. The free beacon folks could compare their numbers to the cost of one new fighter jet at $120 million or so, but I wont hold my breath waiting for the suggestion a penny be taken from the defense budget instead of NIH......
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 04:09:57 +0000
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