NIH: We’d Have An Ebola Vaccine But For Budget Cuts
[su_right_ad]A top U.S. health official says we’d have an Ebola vaccine by now if there had not been so much budget cutting.
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.[su_csky_ad]
tomselliott October 13th, 2014 at 8:20 am
Time to cut the budget to zero.
rg9rts October 13th, 2014 at 8:37 am
Sounds like a great gopee plan
KABoink_after_wingnut_hacker October 13th, 2014 at 8:55 am
“Time to cut the budget to zero”…..and move to Canada where they have single payer healthcare and don’t spend 76% of tax revenue on bullets and bombs.
SteveD October 13th, 2014 at 6:28 pm
It’s quite strange that people who want the federal government (which cannot go bankrupt) to spend less (or nothing!), also for some unknown reason want the private sector (which is subject to bankruptcy) to borrow/spend more.
Most people believe that banks are at fault for not lending enough. Nonsense. Rather than trying first to indebt business, the federal government first should provide business with profits. It does this by buying goods and services, in short, by federal deficit spending.
Key economic equation:
GDP = federal spending + private spending + net exports
(You do the math), if you can.
mea_mark October 13th, 2014 at 6:59 pm
And pledge allegiance to a foreign power, or just die in the ensuing chaos.
edmeyer_able October 13th, 2014 at 8:30 am
Some people think the way to fiscal responsibility is to slash funds for everything except subsidies to the oil and farm sectors of the economy.
rg9rts October 13th, 2014 at 8:35 am
Brought to you by the sequester bunch that now wants to close the borders…Again we get what we pay for…Like the gopee remotely cares
KABoink_after_wingnut_hacker October 13th, 2014 at 8:52 am
We’d also have a Surgeon General too if it wasn’t for the do nothing obstructionist republicans.
rg9rts October 13th, 2014 at 8:55 am
What do we need one of those for???? Look what they did to the tobacco industry!
William October 13th, 2014 at 9:16 am
GOP solutions. Drive the country into a ditch. Blame the black guy.
Red Eye Robot October 13th, 2014 at 9:57 am
The budget was cut so much they only had $653,000 to convince female light smokers in BRAZIL to quit smoking
They only had $3,000,000 to study the health risks of dating mexican prostitutes. They only had $2,000,000 to study how cultural stigmas affect the behavior of homosexual men in CHINA They only had $939,000 to study why male fruit flies were attracted to younger female fruit flies. They only had $442,000 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in VIETNAM. They only had $400,000 to study the non specific effects of acupuncture on hot flashes. They only had $592,000 to study why chimpanzees throw poop. They only had $154,000 to study if excess drinking causes you to lose more mone when gambling. They only had $379,000 on a program that sends text messages to teen encouraging them to walk
edmeyer_able October 13th, 2014 at 11:18 am
Come back when you have the data on whose congressional districts those studies were conducted, then we can talk intelligently about the monies spent.
Red Eye Robot October 15th, 2014 at 12:47 pm
pretty sure china isn’t anyones congressional district
arc99 October 13th, 2014 at 12:11 pm
so add up all of those totals and what you get is roughly equivalent to the bill for keeping troops in Iraq for 4 hours. how come right wingers never talk about the cost of the military adventures you guys love so much?
I have no doubt that if the NIH has been working on an Ebola vaccine 10 years ago, clueless right wingers would be in forums like this demanding to know why taxpayer dollars are being “wasted” on a vaccine for a disease that occurs only in Africa.
you guys have zero credibility. so forgive me if I trust Dr. Collins’ assessment of the situation as opposed to yours or any other right wing crybaby.
Dwendt44 October 13th, 2014 at 12:35 pm
The cost of repairing F-22s cost $228 million. Nobody seems to care that the plane wasn’t built right the first time.
tiredoftea October 13th, 2014 at 1:04 pm
http://youtu.be/c3D0DxjgPB0
Watch and then STFU! You are overdue for a software upgrade. The one that includes ethics and compassion
edmeyer_able October 13th, 2014 at 1:08 pm
16 planes bought from Italy at a cost of 487 million and given to the Afghan AF never flew and were scrapped netting the Afghan govt $32,000, helluva investment hey?
William October 13th, 2014 at 1:27 pm
“They only had $592,000 to study why chimpanzees throw poop”.
…well for one thing, their audience seems to enjoy it.
mea_mark October 13th, 2014 at 6:55 pm
Apparently poop throwing is one way ebola is spread. from http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/10/13/read-this-to-get-a-better-understanding-of-how-ebola-spreads/ But feces thrown about the room, aerosols used in pressure washing the monkey cages or contaminated gloves used to handle the animals could also have transmitted the virus.
Commodore October 13th, 2014 at 2:35 pm
and by “vaccine” we mean a cocktail that would suppress the symptoms but not actual cure you so that big pharma can continue to make a profit off your suffering for the rest of your miserable life.
Obewon October 13th, 2014 at 10:15 pm
Canada’s Ebola Vaccine testing in human trials began today at Walter Reed in MD. Studies in primates have shown the vaccine prevents infections, if given before exposure, and increases survival chances among those who get it quickly after exposure. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ebola-outbreak-1st-human-trials-of-canadian-vaccine-start-in-u-s-1.2796859
Obewon October 13th, 2014 at 10:28 pm
Unanimous GOP obstructionists are why we don’t have nice vaccines preemptively waiting to inoculate and cure survivors, preventing out brakes and viral epidemics.
Retroactively on August 28, 2014, NIH announced that initial human testing of an investigational vaccine to prevent Ebola virus disease (began today) by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.
The early-stage trial will begin initial human testing of a vaccine co-developed by NIAID and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and will evaluate the experimental vaccine’s safety and ability to generate an immune system response in healthy adults. Testing will take place at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
The study is the first of several Phase 1 clinical trials that will examine the investigational NIAID/GSK Ebola vaccine and an experimental Ebola vaccine developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada and licensed to NewLink Genetics Corp. The others are to launch in the fall. These trials are conducted in healthy adults who are not infected with Ebola virus to determine if the vaccine is safe and induces an adequate immune response. ->In parallel, NIH has partnered with a British-based international consortium that includes the Wellcome Trust and Britain’s Medical Research Council and Department for International Development to test the NIAID/GSK vaccine candidate among healthy volunteers in the United Kingdom and in the West African countries of Gambia (after approval from the relevant authorities) and Mali. http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbreaks/2014-west-africa/qa-experimental-treatments.html
Red Eye Robot October 14th, 2014 at 5:50 pm
SECRET $500,000,000 NIH EBOLA LAB FOUND IN CALIFORNIA!!!!
https://twitter.com/CuffyMeh/status/521634137154027521