The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: nih
Dr. Anthony Fauci

Fauci Brushes Off GOP Senator’s Conspiracy 'Question' At Hearing

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday swatted back Sen. Roger Marshall's (R-KS) attempt to trap him with a gotcha question.

During Fauci's Senate appearance, Marshall tried to corner Fauci on whether the United States may have inadvertently funded the creation of the novel coronavirus in a Wuhan lab.

"If COVID-19 is indeed a product of lab manipulation, can you sit here and unequivocally say the viral studies the [National Institutes of Health] funded... could not be indirectly or directly related to this final COVID-19 virus?" Marshall asked.

Fauci replied that the specific experiments in Wuhan that received NIH funding would not have resulted in the creation of COVID-19.

"The NIH... did not fund gain-of-function research to be conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology," Fauci said.

Marshall then pressed Fauci whether "some of the funding" could have "indirectly" helped create the novel coronavirus.

"I'm not sure where that question is going," Fauci replied. "You could do research on something that is benign and has nothing to do with it, and it could indirectly, someday, somehow be involved. So if you want to trap me into saying yes or no, I'm not going to play that game."

Watch the video below.


The Legacy We Could Create for Freddie Gray

The Legacy We Could Create for Freddie Gray

A determined young woman is graduating this month from Howard University with dreams of attending law school. Her LinkedIn page attests to a life of both making and seizing opportunities, from serving as a House of Representatives page while in high school, to working at a fashion firm, a law office and the White House.

All of this would have seemed farfetched 10 years ago when 12-year-old Talitha Halley of New Orleans saw Hurricane Katrina wipe out her home and community, spent an awful week in the Superdome, and ended up on a bus to Houston with her mother and older sister.

The high school in their new Houston neighborhood, Sharpstown, was 96 percent minority. More than 8 in 10 students were eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch. It had a gang problem and a dropout problem. Only about a third of freshmen were making it to their senior years — putting Sharpstown in the top ranks of 1,700 “dropout factories” that Johns Hopkins researchers identified in 2007 for a national Associated Press study. Sharpstown went on to star in the 2012 film Dropout Nation on PBS’ Frontline.

But Halley had a loving, encouraging mother and Sharpstown had Communities in Schools, a dropout prevention group that puts people inside schools to link students with whatever they need — “whether it’s food, school supplies, health care, counseling, academic assistance, or a positive role model.” Halley joined a support group it sponsored for teenage Katrina refugees, applied to be a House page, visited Howard and vowed to go there, and inspired many friends and mentors and to help her achieve her dreams. As the first in her family to earn a college degree, The Washington Post reported that she is graduating with only $15,000 in debt on a $200,000 education.

Freddie Gray lived in a Baltimore neighborhood plagued by similar problems, but his trajectory was very different. He fell four grades behind in reading. He dropped out of high school. He was arrested many times, mostly on drug-related charges. And then he died after sustaining a fatal injury while in police custody.

Why wasn’t Gray more like Halley? It’s a haunting question. The easy answer is just that he wasn’t motivated enough, just didn’t try hard enough. Look further, though, and Gray was up against a deck so stacked that it likely would have crushed anyone, even Halley. His mother was an illiterate heroin addict, and he spent his early childhood in houses with peeling lead paint. His lead levels were so alarming as an infant and toddler that his family sued one of its landlords. He and his two sisters began getting monthly “lead checks” as part of a settlement in 2010.

The National Institutes of Health lists a devastating array of symptoms and long-term complications from lead poisoning. They include aggressive behavior, irritability, low appetite and energy, behavior or attention problems, failure at school, reduced IQ and — in young children — loss of previous developmental skills. “The younger the child, the more harmful lead can be,” NIH warns.

Did Gray’s lead settlement make him dependent and rob him of his will to get ahead? Or was he permanently damaged long before that in ways that make it very difficult to succeed? Where was the government when the Gray family’s landlords were letting paint poison their tenants? Where were the home visits that might have picked up on the situation, the services that might have prevented such costly harm to children and to society?

There are many people talking these days about fixing poverty, income inequality, mass incarceration, unjust sentencing, and police practices that lead to tragedy. President Obama said recently that his mission in office and “for the rest of my life” will be to make sure minority youths have the chance to achieve their dreams. Republican presidential candidates are also in the mix; almost all hewing to the line that government “help” hurts the poor.

The GOP argument ignores history. Government policies, from slavery to Jim Crow, from poll taxes to the mortgage redlining, that kept black people out of good neighborhoods with good schools pretty much put us where we are today. It’s appropriate that the government do all it can to make things right, for as long as it takes.

Furthermore, and this goes for politicians across the board, it’s fine and necessary to help teenagers, prisoners, preschoolers, the working poor, anyone who needs it — but our energy and resources really ought to be concentrated far more than they are on poor children from birth to age 3. They are at increased risk of irreparable damage to their brains, bodies, mental health, and overall potential. Ensuring a good start for the very young should be a priority as high as jobs and education for both parties. As Abigail Adams would say, remember the babies. And remember Freddie Gray.

Follow Jill Lawrence on Twitter @JillDLawrence. To find out more about Jill Lawrence and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. 

Photo: Dren Pozhegu via Flickr

Gingrich Is Right: Double Medical Research Budget

Gingrich Is Right: Double Medical Research Budget

Newt Gingrich recently recalled the bipartisan deal that doubled the budget for the National Institutes of Health — with fondness. This was about 20 years ago, when Bill Clinton was president, and Republicans under Gingrich had just taken over Congress.

Never a member of the Gingrich fan club, I nonetheless join other liberal-minded observers in hailing the former House Speaker not only for not disowning that investment in national greatness but for urging an encore. Gingrich, bless his black little heart, wants the budget doubled again.

About the National Institutes of Health: The NIH is the U.S. agency in charge of biomedical and health-related research. It has 27 institutes and centers, each specializing in its own area — cancer, eyes, allergies, the list goes on.

The NIH has about 6,000 of its own scientists and provides grants for about 300,000 research workers across the country. Its in-house research makes it the biggest biomedical research facility in the world.

The list of NIH triumphs is long. More than a century ago, its scientists developed a diphtheria antitoxin. More recently, they won the international race to crack the genetic code. They’ve fostered vaccines against hepatitis.

So why has funding for NIH been flat since 2003? Because conservative ideologues, in their quest to cut government, don’t much care to distinguish between things that should be cut and things that should not be cut.

The NIH budget over the past 12 years has, in effect, fallen 20 percent. Seeing as over 90 percent of the money goes directly to research, that’s a huge hit on America’s ability to compete in the biomedical sciences. No, the private sector won’t pick up the slack. This is basic research.

Gingrich makes the case that federal support for medical research is a moral, as well as financial, issue. Good man, and guess he’s not running for president this time around.

But the financial piece of the argument is not insignificant. The biggest item in the federal budget is health care. Medicare and Medicaid alone cost taxpayers over $1 trillion a year. An investment in research could bring a high return in savings.

Gingrich offers this example: Over the next four decades, the cost of caring for Alzheimer’s patients is expected to jump 420 percent for Medicare and 330 percent for Medicaid.

“Delaying the average onset of the disease by just five years,” he writes, “would reduce the number of Americans with Alzheimer’s in 2050 by 42 percent, and cut costs by a third.”

Note that these calculations don’t assume a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. That would be wonderful and could happen only if the dollars are spent on research. Today even a billionaire is fairly helpless against the ravages of Alzheimer’s.

NIH-sponsored research could address diabetes, heart disease and cancer, as well.

As Gingrich notes, the NIH is “pioneering the development of immunotherapies, which are already allowing doctors to spur patients’ immune systems to attack cancer and other diseases rather than relying solely on surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.”

NIH researchers have recently discovered a new gene for hepatitis C. Hard to control, hepatitis C often ends in serious liver disease, leaving a liver transplant the only option. Someday gene-based therapies may take the place of these super-expensive operations.

Set aside the potential savings in health care dollars. These therapies can free patients from the grueling treatments now deemed the only hope for containing dread diseases.

Still, there remain ideologues in Congress who would shrink the NIH in service of some simple-minded belief that government is bad. We should ask them to explain themselves.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com. 

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Nurse Nina Pham Is Ebola-free: ‘I Feel Fortunate And Blessed’

Nurse Nina Pham Is Ebola-free: ‘I Feel Fortunate And Blessed’

By Christine Mai-Duc, Los Angeles Times (MCT)

Two weeks after she was hospitalized with a fever, Dallas nurse Nina Pham is now Ebola-free and has been released from the hospital.

“I feel fortunate and blessed to be standing here today,” Pham told reporters at a news conference outside a National Institutes of Health clinic in Bethesda, Md. “Throughout this ordeal, I have put my trust in God and my medical team.”

Pham, dressed in a black suit and light teal top, her nails and makeup done, looked healthy and was smiling as she stood next to her mother, sister and NIH doctors who helped bring her back to health. Many of them were wearing ribbons in the colors of Texas Christian University, a tribute to Pham’s nursing school.

“She as an individual is extraordinary, but she also represents the nurses and health care workers who put themselves on the line…to take care of people who are in such need,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the NIH’s Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Fauci said five consecutive Ebola tests have now shown that Pham’s blood is free of the Ebola virus.

While hospitalized, Pham was cared for by a special team of doctors and researchers, who provided general supportive care, but did not treat Pham with any experimental Ebola drugs, Fauci said.

Pham was able to communicate with family and friends by phone and Facetime.

“She taught me how to use Facetime,” Fauci said, to laughter. “I’m going to miss Nina a lot.”

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, called it a “very special moment” for the institution.

Pham, 26, was the first of two nurses diagnosed with Ebola this month after taking care of Thomas Eric Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.

Duncan, the first Ebola patient diagnosed on U.S. soil, died on Oct. 8.

Two days later, Pham went to the hospital with a fever and was put into isolation. Hospital officials upgraded Pham’s condition Tuesday from “fair” to “good.”

Nurse Amber Vinson, the third person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., is also free of the disease, Emory University Hospital says.

“We are overjoyed to announce that, as of yesterday evening, officials at Emory University Hospital and the Centers for Disease Control are no longer able to detect virus in her body. She has also been approved for transfer from isolation,” Vinson’s family said in a statement. “Amber remains under treatment within Emory’s Serious Communicable Diseases Unit.”

Although the virus may no longer be in Vinson’s blood, she will still require treatment to regain her strength, her mother, Debra Berry, noted. The family statement did not say when the 29-year-old might be released from the hospital.

News of Pham’s release from the hospital came as New York was dealing with its first diagnosed case.

A doctor who tested positive for Ebola was in stable condition at a New York hospital on Friday, as federal officials face heightening scrutiny over protocols for health care workers who have treated Ebola victims.

The ill doctor, Craig Spencer, 33, became feverish in his Manhattan apartment on Thursday and was diagnosed hours later at Bellevue Hospital. He returned to the United States on Oct. 17 after working with Ebola victims in Guinea, a West African country badly hit by Ebola.

AFP Photo/Alex Wong