Senator Rand Paul says we should chop 37% out of the NIH Budget
February 4, 2011
For example, Paul would slash funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by 28 percent and for the National Institutes of Health by 37 percent. (An ounce of prevention might be worth a pound of cure but I guess we’re not paying for either one.)
Surely I heard that one wrong.
HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES…………..$26,510,000,000. (26%)
Notes: FDA is cut by $230,000,000; Indian Health Service is cut by $650 million; CDC is cut by $1.17 billion; NIH by $5.8 billion.
And Sen Paul’s overview [PDF].
DrugMonkey 
February 4, 2011 at 4:08 pm
Sounds like a start! Liking this Paul guy.
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February 4, 2011 at 4:27 pm
If Congress would just can the CSA, legalize everything, and give some tax incentives to pharmacies to handle the demand and/or patient addiction issues that might arise, it would be a lot cheaper to have these folks start seeing a doctor instead of a judge. That would be a savings far more than 37% too.
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February 4, 2011 at 4:29 pm
Sure, why not. Eliminate some disease, improve health, therefore you don’t need as much money because you’ve accomplished some goals.
Or, you’re not accomplishing your goals so why are we giving you money in the first place?
Is this what a Capitalistianist sounds like?
sigh.
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February 4, 2011 at 4:32 pm
Apparently rand is just as big an idiot as his old man.
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February 4, 2011 at 4:52 pm
Never going to happen, of course. But it sure lets you know that these idiots are not the least bit serious about any of this.
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February 4, 2011 at 5:00 pm
NSF – cut by 62%
NASA – cut by 25%
Education – cut by 83%
“The mere existence of the Department of Education is an overreach of power by the federal government.”
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February 4, 2011 at 5:14 pm
Hey, it could be worse, it could be getting *eliminated* like the DoE or the USDA research…“The research done by USDA is there to keep the status quo.” LOLZ!
Or we could be the department of Ed! And get cut by a mere 83%! Don’t you think that, if there was a snowball’s chance in hell of this budget passing, the drop in funding for universities would be fairly problematic?
And decreasing the FDA by 63%? I *knew* I missed Upton Sinclair…
And after all, it’s not like we’re NSF… a 62% cut there.
All in all, it’s probably a good sign this yahoo ONLY wants to cut 37%
Still, I think my favorite part is that he thinks defense should be cut by only 6.5%. Completely contrary to what the average person wants. Putting the Coast Guard under control of the Navy also ought to be entertaining.
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February 4, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Still, I think my favorite part is that he thinks defense should be cut by only 6.5%.
Hm. One of the three largest parts of the budget. Wouldn’t you think you’d find most of the savings there?
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February 4, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Didn’t you know?
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February 4, 2011 at 6:29 pm
I don’t want to cut defense spending.
I want to cut offense spending.
I dare say that the later is substantially larger than the former.
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February 4, 2011 at 6:31 pm
Health research? Fuck that shit, we’ve already got corporations doing our health research for us. Government should totally stay out of it, amirite?!??!1!?
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February 4, 2011 at 7:52 pm
I hope Paul gets struck by something virulent that would have been caught by the NIH or like agencies that he wants to gut.
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February 4, 2011 at 8:33 pm
“Waarrrsss” (think “Braaiiinnns” when you read it). I guess the only thing government is good for is killing people. Thus, more funding for the military and wars. The kills the external people, to kill people internally, we’ll need to be more subtle. Gut the USDA, NIH, NSF, CDC, FDA, etc. Hmm, some people may not like that, better gut education too, so these potential elitists won’t know any better.
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February 4, 2011 at 9:00 pm
I hope Paul gets struck by something virulent that would have been caught by the NIH or like agencies that he wants to gut.
Fair enough. Like what? What’s the last big disease the NIH made a major difference on, and when was that?
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February 4, 2011 at 9:20 pm
@whimple- he wants to cut CDC. So H1N1 could kill off Paul, if we were looking for cosmic equilibrium.
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February 4, 2011 at 10:01 pm
My work is funded by the department of defense. I work on energy systems that the army is interested in. Rand Paul’s budget cuts will severely cripple my ability to do science because I rely on facilities that the department of energy funds.
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February 4, 2011 at 11:53 pm
@ Whimple
Read Harold Varums’ “The Art and Politics of Science” Chapter 7 subsection titled Successful Targeting of Oncogenic Proteins for a good read about how basic science funded by NIH has (at least in part, private industry was intimately involved) resulted in effective treatments for different types of leukemias and lung cancers.
In Rebecca Skloot’s “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” you can read about how the National Cancer Institute (part of the NIH) used HeLa cells to screen potential chemotheraputic drugs, resulting in Vincristine and Taxol.
That’s just a quick glance at books I had on my table. There’s much more. In building 50 there’s a display about how electron microscopists at the NIH helped identify causative agents of diarrheal illnesses. This is all very recent stuff, like past two decades. And I’m not even trying to sift through all the academic NIH funded work or clinical trials or etc. etc. etc. collaborations with industry etc. etc. etc.
You might as well ask “what has American science ever done for anyone.” The answer is “more than you know.”
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February 5, 2011 at 2:42 am
Well that is what you get when you elect a libertarian. All this cutting would be fine until you end up coming down with the disease for which the research had just been cut! I wouldn’t be so confident that corporations will pick up the slack. They are there to make money on drugs, not to have compassion, or find out the cause of disease. Beware of what you wish for you may get it!!!
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February 5, 2011 at 9:20 am
You might as well ask “what has American science ever done for anyone.”
That’s exactly the question Rand Paul is asking.
The answer is “more than you know.”
He doesn’t seem convinced by your answer, does he?
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February 5, 2011 at 10:53 am
Rand Paul, your next president. In an interview with ABC, this clown said that if nominated by his party, he’ll be willing to run for the job.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rand-paul-republicans-arent-brave-tackle-deficit/story?id=12837636
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February 6, 2011 at 7:27 am
Hey, I have an idea!
Cut all of the Reps’ and Senators’ salaries and benefits by 37%. No, no, actually cut them by 67%. Next, no health insurance for any of them….let the freeloading muthafuckas pay their own way like they want the rest of America to. Also, no security details…fuck them…they want guns, they can carry guns. No govt vehicles, no expense accounts….nothing. You want us to share the pain in a tough economy…well, ‘share’ includes YOU too, assholes…
Hey, these people are patriots, right?…I mean they’ll basically do the job for free, if you really think about it.
I’m serious….we need a groundswell to have politicians’ salaries and benefits cut severely.
LET’S PUT THE SERVANT BACK IN PUBLIC SERVANT.
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February 7, 2011 at 10:13 am
Of course Rand Paul wants to cut funding to the NIH budget. He thinks all disease is caused by sin and can be cured with prayer.
And if he is nominated he’ll ride us stupid internet users to the White House, because we’re all huge Ron Paul fans and can’t tell the difference between father and son.
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February 10, 2011 at 7:40 pm
“The answer is “more than you know.”
He doesn’t seem convinced by your answer, does he?”
He wouldn’t be convinced, because according to rand paul, the only thing with the power to do any good in the world is the free* market.
*Free in this case meaning “not really free,” because under Paul’s plan, after the elimination of things like the USDA and FDA, there would be absolutely no oversight over much of our goods produced, and thus, assymetrical information would be rampant.
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March 1, 2011 at 7:13 am
Way to sensationalize the title in melodramatic attempt to make Paul look bad.
There are reasons why such cuts can be made from a true conservative point of view. Maybe if you looked at the details instead of demonizing the idea your country wouldn’t be over 14 trillion in debt, with a derivative back hole of over 1.4 quadrillion.
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March 3, 2011 at 8:05 am
100% agree with James. We’re supposed to be scientists. Spend the time to criticially review the content of the proposal. Don’t just say ‘him bad, we good’.
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