HELP FUND THIS AD: REPUBLICAN CUTS KILL! The Agenda Project is a progressive non-profit political organization founded in 2010 by author Erica Payne. This ad, featuring clips of Mitch McConnell, Pat Roberts, and many other Republicans implies that austerity cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health are responsible for the 2014 Ebola outbreak. This ad with run in Kentucky and other states leading up to the election. youtube/watch?v=c3D0DxjgPB0 HELP FUND THIS AD: The Agenda Project https://facebook/TheAgendaProject Republican Opposition to Single-Payer Health Care is a National Security Threat. NIH director: Budget cuts delayed Ebola vaccine, treatment by Joan McCarter 10/13/2014 Here are the results of austerity, and of a Republican Party hell-bent on proving government cant work by starving it. From Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institute of Health: NIH has been working on Ebola vaccines since 2001. Its not like we suddenly woke up and thought, Oh my gosh, we should have something ready here, Collins told The Huffington Post on Friday. Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that wouldve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready. Its not just the production of a vaccine that has been hampered by money shortfalls. Collins also said that some therapeutics to fight Ebola were on a slower track than wouldve been ideal, or that would have happened if we had been on a stable research support trajectory. We would have been a year or two ahead of where we are, which would have made all the difference, he said. Funding for the NIH since 2004 has been stagnant; $28.03 billion in FY2004, and $29.31 billion last year. That represents a 23 percent loss of purchasing power. The funding gap is even more disturbing for the agency within the NIH that deals most directly with infectious diseases, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which has been slashed in the past decade from $4.3 billion to $4.25 billion. As Collins said, its not as if the research community in the U.S. didnt know Ebola was the massive infectious disease crisis that it is—its been hobbled by Republicans indiscriminately slashing budgets to try to get more tax cuts to the rich. There is no private investment in finding an Ebola vaccine, so its got to come from government. That could still be a couple of years away. Thats on the prevention side, but the funding cuts have hurt on the therapeutic side, as well. Collins says, that while theres a drug cocktail thats so far proving promising for treatment, it hasnt been fully tested and there just isnt enough of it, again thanks to budget cuts. Had it not been for other shortages, we might very well by now know that it works and have a large stock of it, he told Huffington Post. The Republican stranglehold on the budget has to end. Article: dailykos/story/2014/10/13/1336238/-NIH-Director-Budget-cuts-delayed-Ebola-vaccine-nbsp-treatement Here is what the Public Health Emergency Preparedness Fund looks like with its decreased budget. CHART: https://facebook/photo.php?fbid=10152758471511215&set=a.10150278697051215.376887.747251214&type=1 Republicans HATE the TRUTH! Republicans are the Death Panel Party.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 02:59:30 +0000