MEDICAL RESEARCH: Defunding is a mistake

Everyone is going to suffer once this destruction of research, science-based institutions and medical research is shredded by this administration. For generations.

As part of the Epilepsy Foundation supporters we were notified yesterday that all research funding has been stopped nationwide to develop solutions to combat the varied and complex epilepsies that Americans experience. Same goes for childhood cancer, autism, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s. I am a mother who watches their son down 15 pills a day and waits for a battery to die in an RNS device on top of his brain. This was NEVER what we voted for.

No medical research can proceed in a unified method without national support. States and universities on their own cannot fund and develop scientific research that addresses all manner of ailments both inside our borders and entering from foreign soils. 

Strength in numbers means financial, collaborative and global input to advance medical and scientific research. To pretend that small states like Idaho can underwrite research in a vacuum is inane. America cannot become 50 isolated parts uncoupled and make anything Great Again!

This massive assault by this Administration on science and medicine will make Americans die sicker, sooner and no Greater than we were in the 1900s.

LYNN FLEMING

Coeur d’Alene