WHY ARE WE ALLOWING THIS TO HAPPEN?
by Cash Michaels
If there is anyone who is grateful to Almighty GOD, and eternally thankful to modern medicine for the gift of life, and the precious ability to remain amongst the living, it’s me. And if this piece rolls a little long this week, it's because a good part of it is personal.
I’m 69 now, and trust me when I tell you, it has not been easy getting here.
I’ve had more close calls medically in my life than a lot of people, so I know firsthand the extraordinary value of medical research, good medical care, and following the directions and instructions of expert medical personnel to the letter, in order to live longer.
I’m also deeply appreciative of first-in-the-nation policies like the one announced in August 2024 by then Gov. Roy Cooper and NC Health and Human Services Secretary Kody H. Kinsley that allowed eligible hospitals throughout the state to sign on to a plan to relieve medical debt for millions of people across the state.
Trust me, as a citizen and longtime cancer patient, this is what good government looks like. Thank you!
And that’s why it truly and deeply sickens me to see the deliberate calamity going on at the federal level when it comes to the Trump Administration maliciously attacking medical/scientific research and policy; "illegally" freezing and cancelling hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars going to our best research universities; putting rural hospitals here in North Carolina and across the country at risk of closing by cutting billions in Medicaid funding; limiting foreign student exchange programs and causing the mass firings of employees, top researchers and administrators at the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS), the National Science Foundation and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is tasked with protecting our country from pandemics and infectious diseases.
According to The Hill, “Some outcomes have been immediate and tragic, including staffing shortages that have left cancer patients stranded during experimental drug trials and delays in approving COVID-19 vaccines”
“The extent of these actions is unprecedented.”
And sadly, may be permanent.
Even freezing $108 million here at Duke Medical, and canceling hundreds of thousands of dollars in sickle cell anemia research at Duke, over DEI policies, is something the Trump Administration is fiendishly proud of.
Trump actually belittled hormone health studies as “making mice transgender” when he addressed Congress last March. Remember? Such brilliant leadership.
And of course, no atrocity like this is complete, without placing someone who has a complete disregard for modern medicine and vaccine research at the helm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, namely mister anti-vaxxer himself, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
One of the four high-ranking CDC officials who resigned last Wednesday in response to the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, opined that the diminishing of the CDC was Trump and Kennedy’s “…desire to please a political base [that] will result in [the] death and disability of vulnerable children and adults.”
Dr. Daskalakis, who also told the media that RFK Jr. “has never actually been briefed by CDC experts before making major public health decisions,”added that from now on, “The science is not going to be science, it’s going to be some Frankenstein of science and ideology.”
So why put a crazy anti-vaxxer in charge of HHS, you ask?
In part, because it’s what Trump’s MAGA base wants.
For example, Kennedy has severely restricted an updated version of the coronavirus vaccine, shutting out millions of eligible Americans, and increasing the cost by hundreds of dollars for those who qualify. It’s a big mess!
"It's like a goat rodeo over there," opined conservative Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy (no relation).
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who is also a medical doctor, and chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, is not pleased with what’s going on at CDC under RFK Jr. (and very sorry he ever voted to confirm the “kook”), saying last week that a scheduled committee meeting of Kennedy’s so-called vaccine “experts” (they’re really anti-vaxxers like RFK Jr. He fired the committee of real CDC vaccine experts after he got into office) should be postponed, and if not, “…any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the [vaccine] allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership.”
Ironically, prominent conservative talk show host Erick Erickson is now cussing Kennedy out too, because Erickson’s wife, who has Stage Four lung cancer, needs the new COVID vaccine, but somehow isn’t qualified to get it under RFK Jr.’s new rules.
Erickson is among the many who have called Kennedy a “kook” and “a conspiracy theorist who is destroying our public health service in America.”
Boy, it’s easy to swim with the big fish until the hook catches you or someone you love, isn’t it?
To be clear, if you're someone like me, who is also a Stage Four cancer patient, and has a compromised immune system, there should NO question about being qualified for ANY available vaccination…flu, COVID, measles, whatever! NONE!
And now we have Trump casting doubt on the efficacy of his first administration’s Operation Warp Speed program in April 2020 that quickly developed effective COVID-19 vaccines that saved a millions of lives, even though he wasted a lot of time messing around with so-called ‘cures” that also cost a lot of lives.
Guess who’s behind this ridiculous presidential about-face?
Kennedy!
Last Sunday’s Washington Post had a long article detailing the “strong bond” between Trump and Kennedy. Trump MAGA cheerleader Steve Bannon is quoted seeing RFK Jr. as essential to their movement:
“Bobby Kennedy is the instrument, he is the linkage that pulls MAGA and MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] together. That combination, if we grow it smartly, is going to be unbeatable.”
So in Bannon’s warped mind, at least, Kennedy being in charge of the nation’s healthcare system is about building the MAGA/MAHA movement.
That should scare the rest of us sh-tless!!!
This commentary is being written before Kennedy’s appearance at the Senate’s Finance Committee hearing Sept. 4th, but I pray that the Democrats there grill that man to Kingdom Come, proving that he lied his teeth off to Congress months ago just to be confirmed.
I can't expect the Republicans doing anything worthwhile to help get rid of Kennedy.
This guy is so off the wall, nine former directors and acting directors of CDC who worked for both Republican and Democratic presidents, wrote an op-ed in The NY Times recently, brutally blasting Kennedy, saying he has, “… fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven treatments while downplaying vaccines.”
“He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage.”
“We are worried about the wide-ranging impact that all these decisions will have on America’s security.”
My GOD, could those former CDC directors have been any more frightening?
And on Wednesday, over 1,000 current and former HHS employees issued a public letter, demanding that Kennedy resign because his leadership “has put the health of all Americans at risk.”
You know it strikes me the if RFK, Jr. survives all of this, and months from now, American citizens start dropping like flies, we’re all going to remember all of these warnings, and shake our collective heads.
Assuming we’re all still here to still shake anything.
For his part, Kennedy justified replacing the committee of CDC vaccine experts, firing a number of CDC employees, and ultimately the CDC director who had only been on the job a month, by responding to his critics in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Tuesday, proudly stating, “We have replaced leaders who have resisted reform.”
RFK Jr. added that he cleaned CDC house because he didn’t like the way it responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by instructing folks to, among other helpful and logical things, wear masks, close bars and other close gathering spaces, and observe at least a 6-foot social distance where possible.
Pardon me if I’m remembering this incorrectly, but all most medical professionals during the pandemic were trying to do before a vaccine was available was minimize the airborne spread of a deadly virus, and Kennedy has a problem with that? Gracious!
It’s hard to ignore the warning Sarah McCool, a public health professor at Georgia State University, told HuffPost recently, about how all of this Kennedy mess exemplifies the MAGA distrust of the medical community.
“We’ve …seen distrust in public health before,” said McCool. “Usually, however, it was focused on a specific and singular crisis [like COVID-19]. What’s different now is that skepticism is directed at the very existence and authority of our institutions [overall].”
Another professor of global health law called this nonsense at CDC leaving the vital agency “weakened, gutted, and utterly dispirited.”
Kennedy’s MAHA supporters apparently cannot be ignored, and Trump has no intention of doing so. Rumor has it he first offered RFK Jr. the vp slot, but Kennedy turned him down, wanting a position he could build a legacy with.
Well aren’t we lucky?
What’s the endgame here, folks? Why is Trump doing this? To make sure that there’s no other authority Americans will listen too but him, so he puts a nut in charge of our health? Is he that small-minded and diabolical? You’d think a master narcissist like the Golden Dictator would want this country to remain the premier place for scientific and medical discovery, as it has been for many decades. All he’d have to do is take the credit for it. He’s damn good at that!
But the National Library of Medicine has been paying close attention to this dangerous foolishness ever since Trump’s first term, and it recalls him once complaining about “listen[ing] to the scientists” as something only a fool would do, and warned that it would result in a “massive [economic] depression.”
“It is hardly surprising that Trump would take that position,” NLM continued. “After all, the Trump administration routinely prioritized economic interests, and worked tirelessly to remove what it viewed as unnecessary regulatory burdens on economic activity. The Trump administration regularly suppressed, downplayed, or simply ignored scientific research demonstrating the need for regulation to protect public health and the environment.
Can you spell “B-A-S-H C-L-I-M-A-T-E C-H-A-N-G-E,” boys and girls?
I can honestly say that without the invaluable research done in the field of leukemia and prostate cancer in this country until now, I’d be pushing up daisies, instead of happily churning out weekly news stories and commentaries.
When I look back over the years, years when my youngest daughter was still in school, but had to witness her father constantly in and out of the hospital because of leukemia, or having to be rushed to the hospital frequently because of a stroke, or congenital heart failure, or diabetes, or what I’ve been dealing with daily since March of 2021, metastatic (stage four) prostate cancer - something for which there is no cure but effective treatments that have given me and other men a precious, but short lease on the rest of our lives - there are no words for how grateful I am to the dedicated medical personnel who have worked tirelessly to make sure that I could have some life left to see my children grow-up, get good educations, and excel personally and professionally.
Being a black man, I’m more likely to develop prostate cancer than my white counterpart, statistics show. And being a black man, twice more likely to die from it too.
The NY Times reported Wednesday that prostate cancer diagnoses have been rising in recent years while it’s in its advanced stages and not curable. That's not good.
It's also what happened to me.
Medical science today has made it possible for a basket case like yours truly to live much longer than I would have fifty years ago, and accomplish many, many things a black kid from Brooklyn only dreamed of back in the day. So again, I’m eternally thankful for all that it’s done for me personally, and feel strongly about how it has been helping others with debilitating diseases that, at the very least, threaten the quality of their lives.
But what about men in the future who will also suffer from stage four prostate cancer? Aren’t they deserving of better treatments, even a cure, something I will not live long enough to see? The same for women who will contract metastatic breast cancer. I want the best for all cancer patients, but now, shamefully, they may never get it.
The very thought that we now have a president of the United States who, for whatever reason, is doing everything in his power to cripple our ability to help the sick and disabled, to cure vicious diseases we once had the power and ability to tackle, makes me cringe.
What destructiveness Trump has done to medical and scientific research in the over eight months he’s been back in office is astounding. Years of medical and scientific advancements, stopped dead in their tracks, because of him.
There’s no explaining it. There’s no accepting it. Why are we allowing this to happen to our country, to our world? To our families, our children, our elders?
Why?
From what I’m hearing and reading, at age 79, Trump has some serious medical issues of his own he has to deal with. Apparently there is significant swelling in his ankles, signaling an unhealthy fluid buildup his staff tries hard to hide from the press cameras.
And then there is significant bruising to his hands that also shows up in photographs. He tries to hide it with off-color makeup, but it’s become too obvious to miss.
Let’s not forget this is a rambunctious, elderly man who has always had a poor diet, has been treated for COVID-19, was wounded in an assassination attempt, and is in such bad physical shape, folks actually thought he had died last weekend, and his White House staff was covering it up. His critics would also point out that the way he rambles when in public and in front of large audiences suggests there are some deep psychological problems that also may need considerable attention.
And yet, every time Trump has an official checkup, his physicians are compelled to dubiously report that he is in “good health.”
I don’t buy it, nor do millions of other people, but that’s not the point here.
The point is if he can get the best of medical attention for all of his obvious afflictions, then why is he denying the rest of the country the same opportunity?
This is also the guy responsible for at least a million deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. The guy who pushed all kinds of weird “cures,” including injecting yourself with bleach, or just allow the virus to run rampant through the population so that only the strong survive.
There is something about medicine and scientific fact that just scares Donald Trump so much, he feels he has to somehow destroy it. This is neither wise, healthy, or normal.
The man who would be dictator has a God complex, and we’re all suffering because of it.
Indeed, this attitude is destructive, and ultimately, it’s going to destroy this nation at a time when we so badly need medical and scientific expertise on the case dealing with new infectious viral and bacterial strains like never before.
So again I ask the question, Trump’s war on science and medicine - why are we allowing this to happen?
Congress, we’re talking about the health and well-being of your constituency here. Why are you rolling over for this madman?
Hey, conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. The question must also be asked of you specifically when you recently allowed the Trump Administration to cancel almost $800 million in federal funding for scientific research.
As I noted last week when I dedicated this commentary to welcoming Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to North Carolina, quoting her on her dissent noting the absolute danger of not stopping Trump from doing this extraordinary damage, she warned “…potentially life-saving scientific advancements [are] on the line.”
Justice Jackson then added, “The forward march of scientific discovery will not only be halted — it will be reversed. That’s what happens when you make up the rules as you go to help your side win.”
When it comes to the public health, there should be only one “side” here. In other words, though hard to fathom exactly why, what Trump is doing is all sick, ego-driven partisan politics to make people suffer.
Again, why are we allowing this to happen?
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