“As the federal government frantically works to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and as it responds to a second diagnosis of the disease at home, one of the country’s top health officials says a vaccine likely would have already been discovered were it not for budget cuts.
Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, said that a decade of stagnant spending has “slowed down” research on all items, including vaccinations for infectious diseases. As a result, he said, the international community has been left playing catch-up on a potentially avoidable humanitarian catastrophe.
“NIH has been working on Ebola vaccines since 2001. It’s not like we suddenly woke up and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, we should have something ready here,'” Collins told The Huffington Post on Friday. “Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready.”
Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/12/ebola-vaccine_n_5974148.html
Cenk Uygur (http://www.twitter.com/cenkuygur) and Ana Kasparian (http://www.youtube.com/anakasparian) of The Young Turks discuss. Do you agree with Cenk and Ana? Tell us what you think in the comment section below.
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The Snappening, Ebola Vaccine, Microsoft CEO, Columbus Day & New Ebola Case – The Young Turks 10/13/2014 Social Commentary
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTpcK80irdQhQ502qaTXlfAsX4LQ-lCLm