Our lame ducks in the Senate have reorganized the National Institutes of Health.
No roll-call vote seen, not yet, at any rate. Voice votes conceal all. You’ll be missing some other things in the future, too. A few “slight revisions” were tucked into the NIH Reorganization, which passed the Senate in a late night horse-trading session. There were a number of trivial-sounding changes to previous authorizations. This is being sold as a minor revision of the NIH.
A few things, however, stand out, that go far beyond minor. For example, a reduction in required reports to Congress:
The NIH reorganization eliminates specified reporting requirements, including reports on:(1) the environmental factors contributing to breast cancer mortality rates,
(2) the Secretary’s expenditures with respect to AIDS;
(3) aging research;
(4) autism;
(5) a longitudinal study on environmental influences on children’s health and development; and
(6) a study on muscular dystrophy.
This bill had not been expected to pass the Senate during this Congress. However, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) bargained with the Senate to get the NIH bill passed in exchange for House passage of several bills the Senate wanted passed, including the Ryan White Act that funds community HIV/AIDS programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Powerful new oversight committees. The bill also sets up a couple of new oversight committees, one of which is to review the organization & operation of the various institutes. This committee will be composed of some Institute representatives, and others from outside the NIH. Its so-called recommendations for restructuring the Institutes will in fact be operative mandates, unless the NIH Director objects. It isn’t certain exactly what this will mean long-term for the NIH, however it is very likely that these actions will remove a great deal of Congressional oversight from the NIH.
We should not think that these were mere minor tweaks of bureaucratic reorganization. They were pushed through in a rush, for a purpose, as yet unrevealed. Here’s a guess: if these committees follow past track records of the Bush administration, it will mean that cronyism and commercial influence will reign over science and the public interest in the setting of priorities in the Institutes. Even the structures and existence of the Institutes within NIH will be in the hands of political appointees.
Are you ready for Bush’s FEMA-type appointees to be deciding on our health research, or cronies of Big Pharma? If you want to see a hint at what these changes will do, look at what’s no longer having to be reported. Who loses from this, and who gains?
This sounds like privatization of NIH. This is foul!!!! I live in Texas and have seen what has happened when health services, child services and the such are turned over to the private sector. They go right to hell and the people they are suppose to help get screwed!!!
I don’t think they can privatize much more than they already have. (Lot’s of grants are going to organizations other than the traditional universities & med schools, moreso than in the past.) But they can stack the deck with political appointees heading institutes, and filling slots on the oversight committees. And the hand-in-glove government + big Pharma research will continue with much less oversight.
They’ve wanted to kill the one longitudinal research study on kids, and with no reporting, that will put the nails in the coffin on that study. Likewise, there are folks out there who don’t want investigations into environmental influences on a lot of health conditions. But I expect that the gov will continue to fund a lot of the testing of new meds, and if they are effective, Big Pharma will reap the profits. This bill doesn’t do anything to deal with that problem of course.
It also seems to fit nicely with the bill to cap damages at $250,000 for any company or big Pharma, or doctors or hospitals, et al as a result of lawsuits brought due to negligence or harmful death.
I can’t tell you how much I want them all gone, ALL OF THEM!!! That means most of the big corporate sponsored Democrats too. Welcome to “Market Driven America.” When corporations run things no one or nothing else matters but the bottom line and multi-million dollar bonuses and platinum parachutes for retirement for CEO’s.
I WANT THEM ALL GONE!!
“The NIH reorganization eliminates specified reporting requirements, including reports on:
….
(4) autism;”
A typical GOP strategy of giving with one hand – the “Combating Autism Act” which was passed and signed this last week – and taking away with the other – eliminating reports on Autism so there will be no means of monitoring whether the money is spent in ways that will improve the lives of the children with this problem. My almost 8 year old grandson is high functioning autistic, so finding ways to make his life better is very high on my list of priorities.
While the jury is still out on whether the progressively increasing doses of mercury in children’s immunizations has anything to do with autism, the pharmaceutical companies are getting more and more worried about that line of research and the potential for Vioxx-like lawsuits on that issue. Not a surprise that autism research will be downplayed.
A little known “clause” in last year’s bill to encourage vaccine production (allegedly against bird flu) was also protection for drug companies against the side effects of all vaccines.
Never assume.
Considering the massive increase in autism cases you’d think(ha ha) that this would become a number one priority for research funding. Of course if it was found out that autism could be due to environmental pollutions then various big companies would have(well supposedly)clean up their ways of doing business.
I thought I read awhile ago that bush had his picture taken with that young boy with autism who was on was it school basketball team?…anyway same time he was having his picture taken was same time funding for autism was being cut. Merry freaken christmas.
This has been debunked pretty thoroughly.
Not sure what you are reading (government summaries?) I’ve been following the actual research, and there’s still a great deal that’s not known.
I didn’t mention mercury specifically-I said environmental pollutants to encompass the whole area that should be studied to see how any one of them or combination could be effecting a change in our dna.
You are right. I personally doubt that there are exact one-to-one causal links between autism and mercury, because if there were, autism rates would be through the ceiling. That’s NOT to say that mercury exposure is safe, or that it has no role in autism onset for some children. I suspect that several environmental substances and conditions interact with genetic sensitivities to produce a great deal of problems of different sorts.
We simply need a great deal of research on how all of our environmental changes and “improvements”, e.g. “better living through chemistry”, are affecting children as they grow and develop. We know very little, and we could learn so much more with the will and resources to do so.
Actually, the frequency of a continuum of autism-like conditions has gone “through the ceiling.” Like many problems, this one may involve the interaction of genetic susceptibility and a synergistic effect of several types of environmental exposures. Mercury may still be one of them, combined with others. There’s enough valid research to keep Mercury “on the table” as one of many variables. The problem with research as we structure it today is that we generally only look at one environmental variable at a time, and know very little about the genetic predispositions that may contribute to the problems.
Just don’t let Big Pharma off the hook entirely yet.
This is a typical response since Reagan: If the Pres wants to come be photographed with your non-profit, beware! Somewhere, a knife is cutting away at exactly that thing that you do!
If some information I read over at the Orange site about a week ago is anywhere near correct, we had best be looking very hard at environmental links to Lung Cancer. Depleted Uranium munitions are apparently very toxic. We don’t read much about it here, but according to the commenter it is causing untold health problems in the Mid East, and is affecting our personal over there as well. (This was a comment near the bottom of the thread on a story titled “Laura Bush: Media Doesn’t Cover Good In Iraq” Thursday, Dec 14TH.) BTW Happy Holidays at your place Kidspeak.
I’ve heard this from a friend who has family in Lebanon, also. Given all of the old ammo dumps here where we are, I’d check soil anywhere I wanted to live, from now on. (One toxic dump was found under a brand new school, which had to be closed before it opened – the ground was laced with lead from old Civil War and earlier munitions storage at that location. No one knew, and no one thought to check).
Hope your holiday goes well, too. Thanks for the greeting!