\n<\/p>\n
This is Camila. She\u2019s trying to figure out how cancer spreads across the body. David here is trying to cure H.I.V. And Rachael, she\u2019s trying to find new treatments for childhood brain cancer. Or at least they were. \u201cThe Trump administration has so far terminated more than $1 billion in grants for the National Institutes of Health.\u201d \u201cIt has fired over 1,300 employees.\u201d \u201c1,700 canceled awards.\u201d \u201cWow.\u201d Thousands of scientists have been forced to freeze their lifesaving research. \u201cWe\u2019ve had all of our cancer-related research grants terminated.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t even know if my lab is going to exist next year. I don\u2019t know. And you and the people you love will suffer the consequences in the years to come. \u201cUltimately, it\u2019s people who will get cancer in 10, 20 or 30 years who will really pay the price for these cuts.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re going to get to the cure for cancer and Alzheimer\u2019s and so many other things. We\u2019re so close to doing something great.\u201d We were close. But with these brutal cuts, Trump just pushed us further away. Because here\u2019s the thing. So many new drugs originate from U.S. government research, not Big Pharma, including those made overseas. Do you know someone with diabetes? \u201cType 2 diabetes? Discover the Ozempic Tri-Zone.\u201d Prostate cancer? \u201cXtandi is a prescription medicine used to treat men with prostate cancer.\u201d H.I.V.? \u201cDescovy for PrEP is a once-daily prescription medicine that helps protect against H.I.V.\u201d America is the world champion at inventing new drugs. Our government spends more on medical research than any other country. The result: More than half of all new drugs are developed in the United States, which means American patients get them first. \u201cWe developed better therapies for treating H.I.V.\/AIDS in 1996, and the American patients benefited from them in 1996. The Chinese patients did not benefit from them until 2002.\u201d For decades, we attracted the best scientists, gained early access to cutting-edge clinical trials, and most importantly, saved lives at incredible value for money. \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly cheap to do research at a university because \u2014 I shouldn\u2019t say this, but our graduate students and our postdocs, they\u2019re really underpaid. Research at a university is a steal.\u201d And despite all of that, Sebastian\u2019s studies to map the human brain have been frozen. \u201cThink about Alzheimer\u2019s and Parkinson\u2019s disease. Think about schizophrenia and autism. The dollar cost of these diseases is huge, and the emotional cost of these diseases is even huger. Can we wait?\u201d Apparently, Trump thinks we can. \u201cJust listen to some of the appalling waste we have already identified.\u201d His cuts have been broad, blunt and politically motivated. \u201cNo reason was provided other than the fact that we work at Columbia University.\u201d And sometimes, just plain stupid. \u201c$8 million for making mice transgender.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as transgender mice. We study mice that have transgenic mutations in them.\u201d \u201cEverybody can understand the idea of downsizing \u2014\u201d \u201cBut we are facing a 40 percent budget cut.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s more like butchery.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s no Plan B.\u201d The pharmaceutical industry isn\u2019t motivated to invest in the risky long-term research that produces the greatest breakthroughs. \u201cGovernment-funded research is often in the precommercial stage. You can\u2019t make money off of it yet. Once we know that something is going to work, then, of course, the private sector can work on it and make big profits.\u201d And the damage from these cuts cannot be easily undone. \u201cIt\u2019s as if you took your baseball team and you not only quit the game but you basically got rid of all your players and then two years later, you decide that you want to get back in the game. You need to build a team all over again.\u201d \u201cWhy are we tearing that down? I simply do not understand that.\u201d Long after Trump is gone, we\u2019ll all still be facing the tragic reality he has created. \u201cYou\u2019ll start to see other places will have therapies, will have technologies that we will not.\u201d \u201cIt will make a difference if your child or grandchild gets cancer.\u201d \u201cAre you willing for them to have to wait or perhaps die because the therapy for them is delayed?\u201d \u201cThe ideas and the technologies that are being destroyed today, in this moment, some of them irreversibly, those are the cures that would have been present 20 years from now. And now we won\u2019t even know what we\u2019ve lost.\u201d [MUSIC PLAYING]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is Camila. She\u2019s trying to figure out how cancer spreads across the body. David here is trying to cure H.I.V. And Rachael, she\u2019s trying to find new treatments for childhood brain cancer. Or at least they were. \u201cThe Trump administration has so far terminated more than $1 billion in grants for the National Institutes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[574,37,440],"class_list":{"0":"post-17501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-opinion"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}