Fools and idiots destroying America

 

These people make Trump's first term cabinet look good.

What in God's name is he doing?

 

mRNA vaccines may fight cancer

 

Only if they stop gutting research and scientific agencies.

The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official has been pushed out, according to people familiar with the matter.

Dr. Peter Marks, who played a key role in the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed to develop Covid-19 vaccines, stepped down Friday. He submitted his resignation after a Health and Human Services official earlier in the day gave him the choice to resign or be fired, people familiar with the matter said.

“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” Marks wrote in a resignation letter referring to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

[...]

During the pandemic, he was a member of the team that streamlined regulations and pooled government funding to speed development of Covid-19 vaccines.

He had wanted to stay in his position, though his support of immunizations conflicted with Kennedy’s skepticism, people familiar said.

[...]

“My hope is that during the coming years, the unprecedented assault on scientific truth that has adversely impacted public health in our nation comes to an end,” he wrote in the letter.

Marks will leave the FDA as Kennedy has begun to reshape the Health and Human Services Department, including by making plans to lay off 10,000 employees and close offices.

  Wall Street Journal

The entire staff of the federal government's Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy is expected to be laid off, multiple federal health officials told CBS News Friday. The moves are part of a broader restructuring plan ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that involves cutting 20,000 HHS positions.

[...]

However, multiple officials said that written notices of layoffs had not yet been received by HHS employees.

  CBS

UPDATE 09:17 am:

UPDATE 03/31/2025:

Moderna Inc. shares plunged after the resignation of Peter Marks, a top regulator at the US Food and Drug Administration who had long overseen approvals of vaccines and other biological drugs.

Moderna shares fell 13% in trading before US markets opened Monday, while the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF lost 2.3%. Other makers of vaccines and gene therapies also dropped, including Novavax Inc., BioNTech SE and Sarepta Therapeutics Inc.

  Bloomberg

Trump 2.0 - Dismantling the country

Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday calling for the dismantling of the Education Department, an agency Republicans have talked about closing for decades.

The order says Education Secretary Linda McMahon will, “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.”

Eliminating the department altogether would be a cumbersome task, which likely would require an act of Congress.

  Chicago Tribune

"Likely" is doing a lot of work there. They can dismantle, and good luck to you trying to remantle.

In the weeks since he took office, the Trump administration already has cut the department’s staff in half and overhauled much of the department’s work. Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has cut dozens of contracts it dismissed as “woke” and wasteful. It gutted the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress.

The agency’s main role is financial. Annually, it distributes billions in federal money to colleges and schools and manages the federal student loan portfolio. Closing the department would mean redistributing each of those duties to another agency. The Education Department also plays an important regulatory role in services for students, ranging from those with disabilities to low-income and homeless kids.

There is no room in Trump's Amerika for anyone with disabilities, low income, or homeless.

Trump has vowed to cut off federal money for schools and colleges that push “critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content” and to reward states and schools that end teacher tenure and support universal school choice programs.

Federal funding makes up a relatively small portion of public school budgets — roughly 14%. Colleges and universities are more reliant on it, through research grants along with federal financial aid that helps students pay their tuition.

Here is a look at some of the department’s key functions, and how Trump has said he might approach them.

Continue reading.

Earlier this month, the administration pulled back a staggering $400 million in grants already awarded to the school over Columbia’s alleged failure to address antisemitism on campus. Now, Columbia can only have those funds if they agree to let the administration dictate how the school handles everything from student discipline to curriculum to admissions. It’s an unheard-of attack on the autonomy and free speech of a private university.

[...]

As Columbia was the site of some of the biggest anti-war protests, it came in for special scrutiny from the GOP-controlled House of Representatives. Last year, House Republicans dragged the university’s then-president, Minouche Shafik, before Congress to quiz her about Columbia’s response to the protests. Shafik bent the knee, agreeing with the GOP that the university violated Title VI, which protects students based on race, color, and national origin, by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students. She also cracked down on protests, calling in the cops to crush dissent. But none of this was enough, and conservatives celebrated when Shafik was forced out a few months later.

[...]

Notably, neither Trump nor any of the GOP howler monkeys who insist the school remains a hotbed for antisemitism have provided any evidence of ongoing issues at Columbia. Instead, they continue to reference last year’s protests, a thing that the school arguably addressed by letting NYPD riot cops violently subdue protesters.

Which brings us to last week’s letter, which dangled restoration of the $400 million, but only if Columbia agrees to, basically, let the administration run the school.

  Public Notice

Run it into the ground.

It will be about trying to rebuild what he tears down.  Even where possible, it's not going to be easy, or quick.

Also...cancer treatments summarily cancelled.

Social Security?  Yep, that, too.

UPDATE 03/24/2025:

MAGA!

Trump 2.0 - Science is bad

 MAHA haha.

Pediatric cancer research bill

It got pulled out of the budget bill in House negotiations, so they passed it as a stand-alone.

Dang

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland announced on Wednesday that he has a “serious but curable form of cancer” and will begin outpatient treatment.

In a statement, Raskin said, “After several days of tests, I have been diagnosed with diffuse large B cell lymphoma, which is a serious but curable form of cancer. I am about to embark on a course of chemo-immunotherapy on an outpatient basis at Med Star Georgetown University Hospital and Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. Prognosis for most people in my situation is excellent after four months of treatment.”

  CNN

I sure hope he comes through this okay. He's really being tested by life.

According to the American Cancer Society, diffuse large B cell lymphoma “tends to grow quickly” and is frequently treated with chemotherapy through a four-drug regimen administered in cycles three weeks apart. It can be cured in about half of all patients, but it largely depends on factors including the stage when the disease is caught, the society notes.

[...]

[Raskin] noted that he expects “to be able to work through this period but have been cautioned by my doctors to reduce unnecessary exposure to avoid COVID-19, the flu and other viruses.”

I think of all exposures as unnecessary, but I'm not a Congressman in a building with a bunch of shitheads who purposely don't take precautions and have no consideration for other people.

Get 'im, Katie

I'm guessing Congresswoman Porter is an attorney.

Mark J. Alles, who testified today at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing about drug prices, is the CEO of Celgene, and he made $13 million in one year (2017) by raising the price on Revlimid, a chemotherapy drug to reach his company’s yearly revenue target (which earned him a $2.1 million bonus). And he’s currently at a net worth of over $28 million.

  MSN

Give a woman an education, and what does she do with it?

Dr Hadiyah-Nicole Green has become the first doctor to successfully cure cancer in mice using laser-activated nanoparticles, revealed reports but the unique thing about this treatment technology, which was found to successfully cure cancer after testing on mice within 15 days, is that it doesn't require chemotherapy, radiation or surgery. The doctor has now received a $1.1 million grant from the US Department of Veterans Affairs to expand the nanoparticle cancer treatment research.

[...]

Currently, the doctor is running Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation, a non-profit founded in memory of her aunt. She is continuing her research on defeating cancer by using laser-activated nanoparticles. As per the reports, Dr Hadiyah-Nicole Green's main agenda is to make cancer treatment accessible, affordable and effective.

  IB Times

Science in the land of Trump

The chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee on Tuesday slammed an international body’s cancer research on a common pesticide and questioned whether the United States should contribute funding to the body.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) called the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) conclusions on the pesticide glyphosate “unsubstantiated” and “not backed by reliable data.”

He also accused the agency of using “cherry-picked” information.

“IARC’s conclusion about glyphosate relied only on data that was favorable to its conclusion and ignored contradictory data,” Smith said at a hearing about the IARC process.

  The Hill

Much as pesticide companies do in order to get favorable data. Not to mention, they mostly do the testing themselves.

Who is this Lamar Smith quack anyway? A fundamentalist, corporate stockholder?

[Smith, a] Texas representative, who has also aggressively attacked climate science and climate scientists, has promoted legislation that would essentially replace independent scientists with industry representatives on Environmental Protection Agency advisory boards; the EPA has since implemented that policy.

  The Intercept

And remember this one?



We're doomed.

To be honest, I think cancer research in this country and probably at least in Canada is tainted toward chemical companies anyway, so I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the IARC does have faulty research.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ah, the Good Old Money Maker, Cancer

A report published in the Science Daily said, "New cancer drugs, taken in pill form, have become dramatically more expensive in their first year on the market compared with drugs launched 15 years ago, calling into question the sustainability of a system that sets high prices at market entry in addition to rapidly increasing those prices over time."

[...]

Since 2000, cost of certain oral medications for cancer treatment has increased multiple-fold.

[...]

These drugs are preferred as they are less stressful on the patients than traditional chemotherapy treatments.

[...]

Researchers have compared products launched from 2000 to 2010 to those launched after 2010. It was found that a 63% rise has come in the mean monthly spending during the first year when the product was on the market.

Study author Stacie Dusetzina, of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, said that the main message is that these medicines are getting more expensive with time. Though there has been a push to create anti-cancer drugs for patients, the increase in prices is making it difficult for a patient to access the therapies.

[...]

Shawn Osborne, vice president of Pharmacy and Supply Chain Services at University Hospitals of Cleveland, said that these types of cancer therapies are attracting more limelight because they are providing great results to patients.

Just because these drugs have been showing better outcomes for patients, manufacturers have been charging more. Also, just because the drugs are new, getting access to the drugs can be more expensive. The researchers predict that the drug prices will stop increasing at some point of time.

  NH Voice

When something more profitable is created, would be my guess.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Prevention Is Never as Profitable

There’s more money to be made investing in drugs that will extend cancer patients’ lives by a few months than in drugs that would prevent cancer in the first place.

  NYT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Maybe You Can Stop Having Your Breasts Squashed

It surely can't be good for them, dears.

American women have the highest incidence rates of breast cancer in the world.

[...]

They say that the sisterhood is powerful, but in the case of breast cancer the sisterhood is caught between an industry that gets rich off of it and a political party that uses it as a punching bag.

[...]

The Dear Friend & Conscience has been a health-care professional all her working life. She has toiled for many thousands of hours in intensive care units and is certified every which way. She regularly self examines her breasts but refuses to have mammograms because she has long believed their benefits to be wildly exaggerated. And the American Cancer Society, of all organizations, acknowledges that she is correct.

"We don’t want people to panic,” says Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the cancer society. "But I'm admitting that American medicine has overpromised when it comes to screening. The advantages to screening have been exaggerated."

The American Cancer Society bombshell came on the heels of another recent study that recommended most women should start regular screenings at age 50, not 40, women age 50 to 74 should have mammograms every two years, rather than every year, and self-breast examinations are not what they're cracked up to be.

[...]

Left unsaid in Brawley's candid and perhaps even courageous comment is that breast-cancer screenings and the invasive radiation treatments, painful needle biopsies and surgeries that often result are a multi-billion dollar industry that gets filthy rich on overdiagnoses. Then there's this: Too many women who have been treated for breast cancer-related reasons cannot get health insurance or are dropped by their insurers.

  Kiko’s House

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway. And I'm sure if you should be so unfortunate as to contract breast cancer, your doctor is going to say that only if you'd been having regular mammograms....

Freakonomics & Cancer

I'm reading Super Freakonomics (having read Freakonomics some time back) on Kindle loan from the library - and I'm highly recommending it to anyone out there reading this.  I'd only gotten to the second chapter and already come across several things I almost stopped to post about, but this one I simply had to.

According to the book, in only a few types of cancer is chemotherapy statistically effective. 

"The age-adjusted mortality rate for cancer is essentially unchanged over the past half-century, at about 200 deaths per 100,000 people."

I don't know how much chemotherapy has burned up cancer patients' innards in that time, but it's been a lot.

"But in most other cases, chemotherapy is remarkably ineffective.  An exhaustive analysis of cancer treatment in the United States and Australia showed that the five-year survival rate for all patients was about 63 percent but that chemotherapy contributed barely 2 percent to this result.  There is a long list of cancers for which chemotherapy had zero discernible effect, including multiple myeloma, soft-tissue sarcoma, melanoma of the skin, and cancers of the pancreas, uterus, prostate, bladder, and kidney.

"Consider lung cancer, by far the most prevalent fatal cancer, killing more than 150,000 people a year in the United States.  A typical chemotherapy regime for non-small-cell lung cancer costs more than $40,000 but helps extend a patient's life by an average of just two months.  Thomas J. Smith, a highly regarded oncology researcher and clinician at Virginia Commonwealth University, examined a promising new chemotherapy treatment for metastasized breast cancer and found that each additional year of healthy life gained from it costs $360,000 - if such a gain could actually be had.   Unfortunately, it couldn't: the new treatment typically extended a patient's life by less than two months.

"Costs like these put a tremendous strain on the entire health-care system.  Smith points out that cancer patients make up 20 percent of Medicare cases but consume 40 percent of the Medicare drug budget."

Two extra months of life, and in the meantime, how many months of brutal side effects from the chemo?  But doctors are going to continue to recommend chemotherapy for those cancer patients.

"Oncologists are among the highest-paid doctors, their salaries increasing faster than any other specialists', and they typically derive more than half of their income from selling and administering chemotherapy drugs. ... It is tempting, [Smith] says, for oncologists to overstate - or perhaps over-believe in - the efficacy of chemotherapy.  "If your slogan is 'We're winning the war on cancer,' that gets you press and charitable donations and money from Congress," he says.  "If your slogan is 'We're still getting our butts kicked by cancer but not as bad as we used to,' that's a different sell." ... Despite the mountain of negative evidence, chemotherapy seems to afford cancer patients their last, best hope to nurse what Smith calls "the deep and abiding desire not to be dead."  Still, it is easy to envision a point in the future, perhaps fifty years from now, when we collectively look back at the early twenty-first century's cutting-edge cancer treatments and say: We were giving our patients what?

Sadly, I don't think so.  Not unless they come up with another method that makes as much money for the AMA and Big Pharma.