Trump sabotages cancer research
To the Editor:
Before I started my 30-year career as a pediatrician in Haywood County, I had the honor of spending many months from 1984 to1989 at the University of Texas Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.
I worked primarily with children's leukemia. Prior to the 1980s, Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia of childhood (one of the most common children’s cancers) had been over 90% fatal. The diagnosis was devastating for thousands of children and their parents.
Many universities, medical research institutions and hundreds of dedicated doctors and scientists worked together for more than 20 years to conquer this terrible disease.
Today we can celebrate that childhood leukemia (all) is over 90% curable. It was a great victory for medical science.
So, it is with despair and outrage that I am learning of a $4 to $9 billion cut in funding for the National Institute of Health (NIH). Elon Musk and his crew of 20-something computer geeks have decided this massive defunding is needed to “cut overhead.” With the careless and uninformed support of President Trump and Republicans in Congress, these unelected and unknown non-medical “experts” have been given power to sabotage thousands of medical research projects in cancer, heart disease, diabetes and other plagues. The American people will pay an awful price.
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Leaders in the fields of medical research are in shock. Clinical research trials of great potential are being frozen at this very moment. In the words of Jeffrey Flier, former Dean of Harvard Medical School, “A sane government would never do this.”
We will probably hear nonsense about “diversity” being a problem in cancer research, like “diversity” caused the mid-air collision over Reagan Airport. Not likely!
Really, it’s all a great diversion from the big picture — billionaires like Musk using Trump’s 2025 playbook (which of course Trump “never heard of”) to cut billions from programs that actually help people so that Trump’s 2017 tax cut for billionaires can be made permanent. So much for the Constitution. So much for the people. Sens. Ted Budd and Thom Tillis, and Congressman Edwards need to hear us!
Steve Wall
Waynesville
