Medical Research

I am going to send out a medical update on myself in a few days. But right now, I feel compelled to comment on the defunding of medical science. This is something I know a lot about.  NIH is (was) the premier funding source for medical science research in the whole world. But even so it isn’t easy to get an NIH grant (I had two NIH grants, and they were the most intense, time-consuming written documents of my whole career). NIH funds only about 12% of all proposals and they rarely give you all the money you request. Once a study involving human subjects is underway, it is run by skilled technicians or RN’s under the supervision of the investigator. Back then, it would be unheard of to have the funding abruptly cut off. That study is over, probably forever, if the funding were abruptly withdrawn: (The technicians would need to immediately find another job as their salary is their living expenses; the human subjects would leave, and the chain of data would be broken; and many investigators (poorly paid MD’s) would leave the university if medical research could no longer be their calling). If the study was a randomized treatment trial, the incomplete data would be useless, and the subjects would need to get on with some sub-optimal treatment for a possibly life-threatening/life-altering illness. Even if the government were to restore the funding several years later, irreparable harm would have already been done, and most studies could not be started up again. A careless person with a political whim does lasting harm, and that instigator has no clue. I think each major research university around the country should publish a simple list of the major findings their medical researchers have produced in the last five years. You would be impressed.

Virgin River Narows, Zion NP