http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/13/1336176/--We-d-have-a-vaccine-by-now-if-it-were-not-for-budget-cuts-says-head-of-NIH-about-Ebola?detail=email
Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, said that a decade of stagnant spending has "slowed down" research on all items, including vaccinations for infectious diseases. As a result, he said, the international community has been left playing catch-up on a potentially avoidable humanitarian catastrophe.
"NIH has been working on Ebola vaccines since 2001. It's not like we suddenly woke up and thought, 'Oh my gosh, we should have something ready here,'" Collins told The Huffington Post on Friday. "Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would've gone through clinical trials and would have been ready."
It's not just the production of a vaccine that has been hampered by money shortfalls. Collins also said that some therapeutics to fight Ebola "were on a slower track than would've been ideal, or that would have happened if we had been on a stable research support trajectory."
"We would have been a year or two ahead of where we are, which would have made all the difference," he said.
While I certainly don't wish to introduce a political or partisan angle to this tragic outbreak, especially during the election season, (snark alert "I'm shocked, truly shocked to discover partisan politics occurring here on Daily Kos during the election season, ... and by me, no less!"), the consequences of the Paul Ryan - Republican austerity approach, aka "we want a government so small we can drown it in a bathtub" couldn't be more apparent.
Right here, right now we have evidence of how cutting essential budgets is leaving unprepared and off-stride for this crisis in a way that is costing lives.
The NIH's "purchasing power is down 23 from what it was a decade ago."
An even more dire situation exists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is a subdivision of NIH.
Paul Ryan and the Republican austerity extremists talk about budget cuts in the abstract as if they are doing "good things." Here we see the reality of what these cuts can mean in real life. Would we not be remiss not to mention this?
Collins also puts the Ebola outbreak in perspective by reminding us that 50,000 people will contract HIV this year and more people will die in one day of HIV than of Ebola in its known history.
these people are in office operating with a God Complex is this a by-product of White privilege they get to choose who dies and who starves or who can only go to ER's and who can get health care and from where, they also decide if your kid goes off to a war of greed and choice and who get's neglected when they come home broken, and how much your labor is worth no how much you are worth to them. now teaching your kid to be submissive and not to question them your choice although they try to control that to but still your choice what your future looks like.
