By Austin R.
While Congress continues to struggle with the current budget cuts that are now in place after President Barack Obama has officially signed them into commission, thousands of scientists across the country are going to suffer financially and their research will also be affected. Currently at a lab in the University of North Carolina, a drug is being developed that would be manufactured in the U.S. and could cut imports from China, while also offering a safer alternative to an existing version. Lead scientist on this issue is Jian Liu. Liu is currently working on producing a synthetic version of the blood-thinner “heparin” and he aims to prevent the kind of disaster that occurred in 2008, when tainted heparin imported from China killed 94 and sickened hundreds across dozens of American hospitals. Heparin is used in many surgical processes including but not limited to kidney dialysis, blood donations and many cancer treatments. Heparin is actually derived from pig intestines, and currently the U.S. is not in a position to produce enough doses. Projects of this nature in years passed would have been guaranteed funding, but with the federal budget cuts this does not seem to fit the bill. The National Institute of Health is the largest Biomedical Research funder in the country. With the current budget cuts in place it will lose $1.6 billion from its $31 billion budget in its fiscal year that ends September. It will lead to fewer projects being funded in 2013. Congress needs to put personalities aside and put cuts in place that will not lead to suffering of key research projects such as Jian Liu and his team of researchers.
I think that the government should allow and encourage this research in order to better the country. This research could lead to a long list of positive effects on the United States. For example it could help lower our debt, improve safety of citizens, and advance our medical technology. Instead budget cuts are going to hurt all of these things.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that congress needs to rearrange what they value as important and not cut the budget for key projects. The outbreak in 2008 is something we should be cautious about and cutting the money could leave room for another error in research that could result in more deaths.
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