Govt shutdown hampers treatment for cancer patients

[cronus]

http://rt.com/usa/health-patients-studies-shutdown-609/

Govt shutdown hampers treatment for cancer patients, including children

Patients seeking to enroll for treatment in research studies at the National Institutes of Health’s Maryland hospital are out of luck due to the government shutdown.

For every week the shutdown lasts, the agency’s research-only hospital will turn away approximately 200 patients - 30 of them children - who often seek participation in experimental studies after more traditional methods have failed, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Francis Collins told AP.

Though prospective NIH patients are usually eligible for studies at other hospitals around the country, "this is the place where people have wanted to come when all else has failed," Collins said. "It's heartbreaking."

A child with a life-threatening illness is likely the only exception, Collins said, and existing patients will continue to receive care at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda.

In addition, he said that all experimental studies are on hold as long as Congress cannot settle on a budget deal.

"If you expected new treatments for cancer or a new universal influenza vaccine or discovering the causes of autism were going to move forward at the maximum it could, that will not be the case," Collins said. "This is a profoundly discouraging day."

For the 2013 fiscal year that ended Monday, the NIH was only able to fund around 16 percent of the research grant applications it received. A decade ago, one in three of such applications were funded by the NIH, which lost $1.5 billion of its $31 billion budget due to sequester spending cuts earlier this year.

The NIH is scheduled to lose $600 million more from a second round of cuts, meaning that further projects that will not be funded, Collins said.

(continued)

[Warren Dew]

Here's what the Democratic Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, has to say about it:

REID ON SAVING ONE CHILD THROUGH FUNDING COMPROMISE: 'WHY WOULD WE WANT TO DO THAT?'

During a Wednesday afternoon press briefing, CNN's Dana Bash asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about agreeing to fund the National Institute for Health, as the GOP is proposing to do with no strings attached. Bash mentioned the fact that due to the shutdown, children with cancer are being turned away from clinical trials at the NIH and that the GOP will pass a bill today funding the NIH.

Reid and Democrats, however, are insisting they will vote against or table the limited CR. President Obama has already threatened a veto.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism ... rom-cancer

[Ian]

Breitbart. Perfectly unbiased. Brilliant, Holmes.

Do you even TRY to find objective information?

[Seth]

Breitbart. Perfectly unbiased. Brilliant, Holmes.

Do you even TRY to find objective information?

Is Breitbart wrong?

Nope.

That's exactly what Reid has said. He's not going to allow a vote in the Senate on ANYTHING but a "clean bill." He doesn't give a fuck about sick kids and he's perfectly happy to play politics with their lives because he's unwilling to even negotiate much less compromise and fund things on a piecemeal basis. This from the asshats who haven't put forward or produced an actual budget, as they are required to do each year, for more than four years.

Cry me a river.

[Warren Dew]

Breitbart. Perfectly unbiased. Brilliant, Holmes.

Do you even TRY to find objective information?

The video at the link is from CNN. When you have a right wing source quoting a left wing source, that's about as close to objective as you can get.

[That Alien Guy.]

Like when Al-Qaeda and Noam Chomsky agree that the United Chimps of America North are a bunch of demented warmongering pro-Zionist stooges?


Not that I care. As long as I get footage I don't care if it's a massacre at a religious ranch or drones bombing a copulation bonding ritual.

It's ALL good.