To the Editor:
As a retired medical oncologist, I am deeply concerned about our national health care. This is not a partisan topic – the decisions being made will affect all of us.
The defunding of research grants to the National Institutes of Health and other leading research institutions will directly impact our ability to fight many common diseases. If you are afflicted with cancer or any of the myriad other diseases that affect our quality of life, many of the incredible drugs available to you exist as a direct result of these researchers’ painstaking work, day in and day out. Without their efforts, patients will miss out on the benefits of many potential drugs that could help millions of people.
It is also inexplicable to me that we now have a secretary of health and human services with neither a medical nor a scientific background. A person now in charge of our national health has never been trained in the diagnosis or treatment of any disease. He has never been trained in how to conduct or interpret scientific research. He holds a known bias against vaccines and recently dismissed the entire vaccine advisory panel, composed of experts in the field.
Recently, Dr. Susan Monarez, an infectious disease researcher and the recently confirmed head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was fired for voicing opposition to recent changes in vaccine protocols. Three other top officials at the CDC have since resigned. I would view any health-care recommendations coming out of HHS or the CDC as dubious, and would rely only on your personal physician to guide you.
The current administration has given many reasons for funding cuts. I do not believe there is any valid reason to dismantle a system that has produced so many life-saving results, including the mRNA COVID vaccines that saved countless lives. The dedicated research scientists who conduct these critical studies are motivated solely by their desire to solve problems in the laboratory – problems that the rest of us would never even consider, let alone understand.
The saddest part is that the politicians, who are supposed to be concerned about their constituents, watch this happen and remain completely silent – to our detriment.
David Blom
Avalon
