Whoever wrote this sounds frightened and angry--so I hope this makes
you feel a bit better. You don't seem to have a good understanding
about how medical research works in the US but it is and has been for
quite a while--largely a US federal government endeavor. The NIH and
NCI with our tax dollars has funded research of over 40 Nobel prize
winners and I don't think anyone who looks into this can deny that
this has been a huge success. Those of us with CML should be grateful
for all the tax dollars that went into the basic research that
eventually led to the Gleevec. Research is also done with donated
dollars and drug company dollars--but the largest part of research
dollars has been tax dollars. I'm the advocacy leader in Western
North Carolina for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and my
responsibility in this capacity has been to lobby in Washington for
more & continued federal funding for research for blood cancers. The
LLS funds a lot of research but the amount spent by the LLS is a drop
in the bucket compared to the amount contributed by tax dollars. We
would not be where we are today (in my case alive) without the basic
research done with our tax dollars. This has added years of life for
many many people--including almost everyone with a CML diagnosis. So
when you get all worked up about something like this--stop and do some
research first. You don't need to worry that research will be
negatively impacted. It doesn't actually have much, if anything, to
do with the health care legislation--but the US government has been
doing a great job of this for many years and there is no reason to
believe it won't continue. The only threat to this funding has been a
conservative ideology which wants the private sector to do
everything. The problem is the private sector doesn't do basic
research as they are motivated by short term gain and can't wait
afford to pay for research that may or may not pay off within a few
years. We would need to wait for a very long time if we were to
insist that only private donations and corporate research were used.
We certainly wouldn't have Gleevec yet.
Dorothy
On Dec 29, 2009, at 7:09 AM, jhlane wrote:
With the corrupt US government ready to absorb what had been the most
advanced healthcare on earth, we can be sure this unconstitutional
takeover of a sixth of US productivity will damage CML research and
CML'ers themselves. I expect to lose my patient assistance and
probably my life. Thanks you congressional cheats.
Combined federal medical programs are already over a hundred trillion
dollars in the red, and every single federal program is a disaster,
from Social Security to welfare to federal mortgage lenders to you
name it. Medical research is already negatively affected and this
piece of junk legislation isn't even written yet...but it's been
passed.
What a zoo the US capitol is. We were warned over two hundred years
ago and still we handed them our lives.
--
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A support group of http://cmlhope.com
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