Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Iz We have the highest chronic burden of any country in the world, Ken Kennedy said at a hearing in January before the Senate approved the Health and Human Services Secretary.
And on Monday, he launches a tour in the Southwest to encourage a program to emphasize nutrition and lifestyle to combat chronic diseases.
However, since Mr. Kennedy undertakes the duty of Kennedy, the key grants and contracts that directly deal with these diseases, including obesity, diabetes and dementia, which experts accept that the country is among the leading health problems of the country, are eliminated.
These programs vary in scale and expense. Researchers warn that their deaths may mean opportunities to address one aspect of public health, which Mr. Kennedy says is priority.
Pennsylvania University Perelman Medical Faculty of Health Services Transformation Institute, co -director of Dr. “This is a big mistake,” hezekiel Emanuel said.
Diabetes Diabetes Research has been stopped for decades
Since it started in 1996, the diabetes prevention program has helped doctors understand this fatal chronic disease. The situation is the most expensive, effect of the country 38 million Americans and Folding 306 billion dollars In the last year with direct costs. About 400,000 Deaths It was the eighth leading cause of death in 2021.
The program was terminated and it has little to do with the reason. Instead, it seems to be a matter of a chief researcher to work in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The program started when the doctors in 27 medical center received a funding from the National Health Institutes for a study asking if Type 2 diabetes can be prevented. 3,234 participants had a high risk of illness.
The results were a great victory. Those assigned to follow a healthy diet and exercise routine reduced their chances of developing diabetes regularly by 58 percent. Metformin, which is a drug that lowers blood sugar, reduced the risks of 31 percent.
The program, Diabetes Specialist at Harvard Medical School. David M. entered a new stage led by Nathan. The researchers followed the participants to see how they progressed without the constant attention and support of a clinical research. The researchers also examined their genetic and metabolism and looked at weakness and cognitive function measurements.
A few years ago, the researchers had an idea. Some studies have argued that people with diabetes have a higher risk of dementia. However, scientists did not know if vascular dementia or alzheimer’s or exact risk factors were. The diabetes program can renew its focus on research with 1,700 aging participants.
The group is a new chief researcher. Jose A. Luchsinger added. For administrative reasons, including the new focus of Demansa, the program money of the program. Luchsinger’s home institution, the University of Columbia, a third inspector of the Harvard or George Washington University decided to flow.
On March 7, the Trump administration made a grant and contract of 400 million dollars to Columbia, saying that Jewish students were not protected from harassment during the protests in Gaza. The diabetes grant was among those who were terminated: 16 million dollars in the year when Columbia shared in 30 medical centers. The work suddenly ended.
Andrew G. Nixon, the Ministry of Health and Human Services Communication Director of the Ministry of Health and Human Services, said that “Anti-Semitism is clearly inconsistent with the fundamental values that should inform liberal education to inform liberal education” and “Columbia University is unacceptable”.
At the end of their grants, researchers started advanced cognitive tests for dementia proof of patients, and then followed brain imaging to look for amyloid, which is the distinctive feature of Alzheimer’s disease. They planned to complete the tests for the next two years.
Later, Dr. Luchsinger said that the group would look at the amyloid’s blood biobelirts and other dementia symptoms, including brain inflammation. For comparison, they planned to perform the same tests on the blood samples of the participants 7 and 15 years ago.
Dr. Luchsinger said, “very few studies gathered blood and was going back so much,” Luchsinger said.
Now most of the work cannot start and the starting part remains incomplete.
Another disturbing question that researchers hoped to answer was that the metformin had an increase, decrease or no effect on the risk of dementia.
“This is the work of the largest and longest metformin so far, Lu said Luchsinger. The participants who were assigned to take the drug in the 1990s lasted more than 20 years.
“We thought we had the potential to rest this question about Metformin, Lu Luchsinger said.
The only way to save the program Nathan said that Mr. Kennedy agreed to restore the financing in Columbia or to transfer the grant to a chief researcher in another medical center.
Working researchers apply for a diabetes meeting in Congress, hoping that it can help to sue health and human services.
Dr. Nathan said, “We hope that congress members and senators could dominate and“ This is crazy. This is chronic disease. This is what you want to work. ”
There has been no change until now.
Contains diversity. In fact, this is too much diversity.
Compared to the Diabetes Prevention Program, a program that educates pediatricians to become a scientist is very small. But pediatric researchers say that Pediatric Scientist Development Program It helps to include chronic childhood diseases in medical research.
40 years ago, when pediatric department chairs wanted to create a constant financed program by the National Child Health and Human Development Institute.
Participants are clinicians who are trained in sub -experts such as endocrinology and nephrology, applied as clinicians and inspired to help young patients they see from the first -hand.
The highly competitive program allows seven to -eight pediatrician training in university medical centers for a year, pairing them with mentors, and clinic to research conditions such as obesity, asthma and chronic kidney disease.
Looking at the past, the fate of the program was sealed in 2021 when their leaders applied for the renewal of their grants. It looked like a proforma. This was the eighth renewal.
However, this time, the external committee of those who review the grant, the lack of diversity of the greatest weakness of the proposal to the inspectors, he said. The program was needed to search for various ethnic origins, economic backgrounds, states, research types and pediatric expertise.
Criticism, for example, “should be careful to hire applicants from various pasts, including the groups that are shown to be sufficiently represented in biomedical, behavioral, clinical and social sciences.”
Thus, the leaders of the program liberally sprinkled diversity with a rewritten grant application.
Professor of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College and President of the Pediatry and Director of the program. Sallie Permar said, “Diversity was on the grant in the widest sense,” Sallie Permar said. “This was what the reviewers fully appreciated when we send it again.”
The grant was renewed in 2023. It is now terminated. Reason? Diversity.
The letter of termination of the authorities at the National Child Health and Human Development Institute, said that there is no point in rewriting the request for grant. The inclusion of diversity has made the application so linearly that “no change in the project could not align the project with agency priorities”.
Department of Ministry of Health, Mr. Nixon, did not answer the queries about the cancellation of the pediatric program.
Participants in the program are miserable.
Sean Michael Cullen was studying childhood obesity at Weill Cornell in New York. He investigated why male mice feed puppies producing a high -fat diet that became fat, even when these offspring were fed with a standard diet.
He hoped that his findings would help children to be predicted to try to intervene in people who were at risk of obesity.
Now the funds are gone. He may ask for private or charitable financing, but he has no clear expectation.
Evan Rajadhyaksha is in a similar situation. A childhood kidney disease expert at the University of Indiana. When he was calm, he looked at a small girl who developed kidney disease because of a condition in which some urine was washed from the bladder to the kidneys.
Dr. Rajadhyaksha has a hypothesis in which vitamin D supplements can protect children.
Now, this should stop. Without financing, research is waiting to quit and return to clinical work.
Dr. Permar said he didn’t give up. The cost of the program is only 1.5 million dollars every year, so he and his colleagues are looking for other support.
“We ask foundations,” he said. “We start asking the industry-we didn’t have an industrial finance before. We ask department chairs and children’s hospitals, is it willing to create funds?”
Uz We are literally looking under every sofa pillow, Dr. Dr. said. Permar.
“But,” he said, federal support for the program “became the basis and cannot replace it.”
