One of the most outrageous things that the Trump administration, through Project 2025, plans is the destruction of a handful of absolutely necessary federal agencies or institutes, all in the name of… Not really sure. The administration calls each agency “corrupt” and there is the message that these agencies cost a fortune in federal money (Not all). But one gets the sense that their little hearts just wouldn’t be in it if corruption was the actual problem. It seems far more likely that they want to break these agencies because they want to break agencies, not much more. The fact that the National Institute of Health, which oversees much of the federally funded research in the country – something that should be wholly outside of politics, is on the cutting block is apparently a non-issue. It gets even worse when the author of Project 2025 and current OMB Chairman Russel Vought has a daughter whose life was saved by an NIH-developed drug and he wants it slashed anyway.
Talk about kicking the ladder out from under you, leaving everyone else down and looking up. How does Vought not see the irony and feel an overwhelming sense of shame? Mother Jones has the specifics:
But some of those so-called insiders—that is, the NIH—funded research that helped scientists better understand cystic fibrosis, which led to Vertex Pharmaceuticals developing a cutting-edge treatment that Vought’s daughter Porter benefited from. In a 2021 Instagram post, Vought’s then-wife shared that the couple’s daughter had started Trikafta, a drug that has shown great promise in managing pulmonary issues associated with cystic fibrosis, which affects some 40,000 Americans.
The number, 40,000 Americans, is not a big one – and that is why it takes federally funded research, it isn’t some hugely promising pharma field like depression. But for the people with cystic fibrosis this would mean everything. Having had a chance to be close to someone with CF – I can say that it is a miracle cure because their lives had been tragic. They often do not live long into adulthood and even at age 20 or so seem to always be sick, always in the hospital, always getting specialized treatments. The disease is their lives. Apparently Vought is fine with people suffering other diseases not getting the benefit of federally funded research:
But Vought appears to be shutting that door firmly behind him, helping to mount a dizzying range of attacks on lifesaving medical research at (and beyond) NIH. Funding cuts to NIH across 28 states—such cuts are temporarily blocked in 22 others that sued over the move—means that research into rare diseases, already inadequate, may slow down. 95 percent of rare diseases, unlike cystic fibrosis, have no treatment, according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders, and most organizations lack the budget to fund drug research in partnership with pharmaceutical companies.
Right. Big Pharma has its goals and priorities pegged. They want drugs that must be taken every day for years for chronic conditions that are rampant throughout the population, again – depression is the classic example, though nowhere near the only one. The development of Prozac and then all the “Me, too” SSRIs (Each company has their own special version based on essentially the same principle), set the bar for the financial boom of the type.
Thus it is such that a cystic fibrosis drug is necessarily of limited value (to Big Pharma) at least and until the research is done – and then look out because it can produce the drug for near no cost and charge an absolute fortune for it, claiming it needs to research such conditions and medications. And so thus it is that Vought is just a horrible person of the type that would advocate Project 2025 – the ultimate ladder kick, but only after enjoying the fruits of a vibrant democracy of compromise and moderation. The move now is to grab the maximum amount of power for the Right, even if it comes at the cost of drug research of the type that saved one’s daughter.
Vought should not be capable of going through with something like this. He would otherwise need to pull back and withdraw the agenda to destroy the NIH – saying that it’s an area that should remain free from politics. People would still call him a hypocrite; “He only saves the agency that saved his daughter, nothing else… ” But – amazingly, that is still better than what he plans on doing.
Stunningly cynical and hateful. They can always find another bottom level.
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“How does Vought not see the irony and feel an overwhelming sense of shame?”
Jason, I cannot believe you were able to type those words.
At all.
Vought is INCAPABLE of “shame” as is pretty much every single GOPer and definitely every MAGAt. If they had the slightest sense of “shame,” they’d kill themselves at once in a futile attempt to reclaim their honor.
And don’t forget, all the MAGA’s will vote for Trump again and again ad infinitum. “At least he’s getting things done!!” is the cry. And they’re right. He is destroying the country once known as the United States. And he will have as many terms as he wants til he dies because people are loving it. And decades from now their grandchildren MAY wake up and ask what the hell they did??? But I’m not counting on it.
Trump’s dad lived into his 90s – although he had dementia in the end.