This is just what we don’t need. Health and Human Services (HHS) is cutting a full 25% of its workforce. Regional offices will drop from 10 to only five. The cuts include 3500 to the FDA, the agency that’s supposed to protect our food. It was only last year that we saw Boar’s Head forced to close a factory in Virginia after 10 died from tainted meat.
HHS claims the cuts only affect administrative staff, but they seem to affect scientists and researchers. Then there are both staff and funding cuts at CDC, which will surely gut many local public health departments.
And those of us who have Medicare should take pause, because those cuts will affect us as well in spite of pronouncements. But, why worry about measles and HIV/AIDS when you can drink raw milk and take Vitamin E? Now, there’s medical judgment for you.
Prayer for the Day
Bewildered by changes in the world around us, O God,
We wonder why medical research is on a chopping block;
Fearful of a world controlled by unholy inquisitions, O Lord,
We wonder \when sanity will be restored to our lives.
In this time of turmoil that affects our daily lives,
Give us strength and courage to call out quackery and fraud.
In the name of the One who is our strength,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
When we inevitably get another massive outbreak or pandemic, we're going to find ourselves really short-staffed, as we did during the last pandemic, before all of these cuts were made. So instead of bolstering and investing in our public health infrastructure and our health care infrastructure, we're pulling funding from it, when we just saw what happened at our current levels of funding and resourcing.
Tom Cotter, Health Care Alliance
Imagine if this were happening during the breast cancer research boom 30 years ago, where we were finding better ways to identify subtypes of breast cancer and targeted treatments. More women would be dying now of breast cancer, left and right. Same thing with prostate cancer.
Senior NIH official, who spoke on condition of anonymity
To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live.
O simple ones, learn prudence; acquire intelligence you who lack it.
Proverbs 8:4-5