On the National Institutes of Health (NIH) homepage, the first thing you’ll probably notice is the welcome to every visitor, which reads “Due to the lapse in government funding, the information on this website may not be up to date…” Unfortunately for the NIH, the world’s largest research hospital, the lack of funding cuts much deeper than the impact on current, accurate information for website readers.
You see, the NIH is entirely devoted to clinical trials and those trials are being impacted by the government shutdown because Federal health programs are down thousands of employees. Within the NIH alone, 75% of the staff has been furloughed. That’s almost 15,000 people that have devoted their lives to research in pediatric cancers, childhood infections, autism, and many other life-threatening and life-altering illnesses, that are off the job while Congress figures out how to agree on a budget.
John Burklow, spokesman for the NIH, said “More than 1,400 ongoing clinical trials will continue at the NIH Clinical Center, but it won’t be able to enroll any new patients in these trials or start any new trials during the shutdown.” Burklow estimated that for each week of the shutdown, two hundred patients would experience delays in their trials, without about thirty of those being children, the majority of which are fighting cancer. Some might argue that a short-term shutdown of certain health services is not a big deal. But for a child who has likely already failed other cancer treatments, and is looking for new hope, this is devastating news.
Our children face enough obstacles in their fights against cancer.Hope should not be one of them.
Please join us in urging Congress to get the government back up and running.
You can contact your legislators by phone, email, or mail.
Find their information here -> https://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml
By: Steve Nelson