“It’s criminal! A lack of respect for science.”, says Richmond physician Dr. Bruce Silverman about the Trump administrations cuts this week to mRNA vaccine contracts.
The same thoughts are being echoed throughout the medical world after HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. announced the cancellation of almost $500 million in contracts to develop mRNA vaccines to protect the U.S. against future viral threats. Michael Osterholm who runs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, told NPR it is the most dangerous public health judgement he has seen in 50 years.
Silverman agrees. He says many studies were already underway in the U.S. to use mRNA vaccines for a variety of diseases. “There will be increased morbidity and mortality”, Silverman says, “We will begin to see this in the fall and winter months when more viral transmission increases. More ER visits and more hospitalizations”.
Doctors believe that the fallout from the administration’s cuts to research funding and grants will affect everyone in the long run, and most people don’t realize how far medical research has come, because it was always something we could count on.
Silverman, a retired Nephrologist, who is a physician’s advocate as well as serving as Medical Director of the Goochland Free Clinic points to AIDS as an example of a disease that has been nearly fully controlled because of research like this. ““I think AIDS is one of the biggest things in my lifetime that has come full circle. When I was coming out of medical school and was starting my internship was when the AIDS crisis first started. We didn’t know what to do with these people, they were young people, they were so sick, they were dying right and left. Now it’s a very treatable disease.” Most people with AIDS live full lives with the right medication cocktail and usually die of something other than AIDS, Silverman says. Research on a vaccine to prevent AIDS was underway, and now that research has been totally eliminated in cuts to NIH.
Silverman says health should not be a partisan issue. He says just look to Republican President George W. Bush who launched an AIDS relief plan in 2003 to combat the global spread of the disease to see how far we’ve come.
He warns cuts to research and contracts will be very dangerous to everyone long-term. ”Viruses have a tendency to not respect borders; they travel from place to place”.
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