A friend sent me this story:
At the NIH, Director Francis Collins said about 200 patients who otherwise would be admitted to the NIH Clinical Center for clinical trials each week will be turned away. This includes about 30 children, most of them cancer patients, he said.
Do you know who goes to the NIH itself for cancer care? People for whom no other options exist. They are usually the people with the worst disease, who don’t have much hope anywhere else. They go to the NIH to get cutting edge experimental treatment.
As Congress sits around this week playing for “optics” and trying to “win some points”, I hope they take a few minutes to consider what the parents of these kids must feel like. Just reopen the government; you can all feel free to being your bickering again then. But this is unbearable.
