What might we lose if health research funding is cut?

 

There is idiocy and stupidity everywhere in the Trump administration, but probably the worst of it is cuts to health research.  They cut mRna vaccine research, perhaps thinking that bird flu isn't a problem.  

Guess what?  It is.  All the seal bodies in this picture are deaths due to bird flu. Imagine if bird flu changes just a little bit (and viruses do that, we know) and learns how to infect humans. That would be BAD. Especially if a vaccine can't be manufactured quickly, as was done for COVID-19.  Which was an mRNA vaccine, of course.

And then there's cancer. Right when a universal cancer cure might be possible -- I mean that, because you can read the article -- research funds are being drastically cut.

Did I say that's stupid?  I'm not sure. So ...

IT'S STUPID !!!  

So read this:

Surprising finding could pave way for universal cancer vaccine

"An experimental mRNA vaccine boosted the tumor-fighting effects of immunotherapy in a mouse-model study, bringing researchers one step closer to their goal of developing a universal vaccine to “wake up” the immune system against cancer."

Yes, indeed. An experimental mRNA vaccine. And research on that front is being cut.

STUPID.

And here's more proof of that.

"  “This paper describes a very unexpected and exciting observation: that even a vaccine not specific to any particular tumor or virus — so long as it is an mRNA vaccine — could lead to tumor-specific effects,” said Sayour, principal investigator at the RNA Engineering Laboratory within UF’s Preston A. Wells Jr. Center for Brain Tumor Therapy.

“This finding is a proof of concept that these vaccines potentially could be commercialized as universal cancer vaccines to sensitize the immune system against a patient’s individual tumor,” said Sayour, a McKnight Brain Institute investigator and co-leader of a program in immuno-oncology and microbiome research."

Co-author Dr. Duane Mitchell seconds the statement.

" “It could potentially be a universal way of waking up a patient’s own immune response to cancer,” Mitchell said. “And that would be profound if generalizable to human studies.”

So, there it is. The possibility of a vaccine that can treat all cancers -- the proverbial "cure for cancer".  And the dumb-f--ks in charge of the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services are canceling research grants into this breakthrough technology.