The National Institutes of Health is the largest source of funding in the world for medical research. He also suffered Huge budget cuts in the past few weeks imposed by the Trump administrationThis invites the reflections of Dr Timothy Johnson, longtime medical editor ABC News and editor -in -chief of the Harvard Medical School health letter:
During my long career in medical journalism, I had the great privilege of knowing many leading medical researchers in this country. They were generally people of great integrity who had devoted themselves to the often frustrated and tedious task of careful research to find new remedies and prevention for important medical problems. And the essential for many of them was that, without the support of the government, they could never have achieved the discoveries that helped us all.
That’s why I am amazed by A recent report This indicates that the National Institutes of Health of the Trump Administration have stopped payments on subsidies totaling more than $ 1.8 billion for almost 700 specific medical research projects.
This hammer approach will lead to terrible damage to many exceptional research programs, and it will destroy the career of many young medical scientists who are starting their research. These are dedicated people who have already followed many years of difficult training and can be at the dawn of certain major discoveries.
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And I believe that it is possible that many of these suddenly defined researchers will find positions in other welcoming countries – a “brain leak” unlike the flow of many scientists In This country during and after the Second World War.
So, why don’t more politicians insist on a more surgical approach that would find legitimate savings without potentially destroy the research infrastructure that has served our country so well for decades?
In simple terms, we are faced with a choice between intelligent decisions or the reckless destruction that can affect the health of our country for future generations.
And if I can use a sophisticated medical term, it seems to me that the right choice is “evidence”.
History produced by Liza Monasebian. Publisher: Carol Ross.