As far as I can tell, none of the major news outlets have picked this up yet. (Nothing on NYT, CNN, CBS or ABC.) The Dump administration is terminating the Women's Health Initiative, but you have to go to Science Magazine to find that out, at least as of today.
President Donald Trump’s administration appears to be killing much, if not all, of a historic initiative that was the first, and is still the largest, National Institutes of Health (NIH) effort centered on the health needs of women. The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) has enrolled tens of thousands of participants in clinical trials of hormones and other medications and tracked the health of many thousands more over more than 3 decades. Its findings have had a major influence on health care. WHI leaders announced yesterday that contracts supporting its regional centers are being terminated in September and that the study’s clinical coordinating center, based at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, “will continue operations until January 2026, after which time its funding remains uncertain.” They added that the contract terminations for its four main sites “will significantly impact ongoing research and data collection … severely limit[ing] WHI’s ability to generate new insights into the health of older women, one of the fastest-growing segments of our population.” (There are about 55 million postmenopausal women in the United States.)
The WHI, like the Framingham Heart Study, is a long-term, large-scale cohort study. These are obviously expensive compared to short-term studies, but on the other hand they are really innumerable studies embedded in a single project, and they are the best way, often the only way, to answer many important questions. A major limitation of much epidemiological and clinical research is short-term follow up, which often produces misleading results. Some of the important findings of the WHI are actually negative: that estrogen and progestin do not prevent heart disease, and in fact are associated with increased risks; and calcium and vitamin D supplementation does not prevent fractures, in postmenopausal women. But there is no way to establish this without long-term followup and sufficient sample size. But it has also produced an avalanche of findings in many areas. Here are the papers published from WHI data in March of this year alone:
And the list for February and every month before is just as long. Oh, and the actual cost? Less than $10 million a year. The Dump administration wants to cut NIH contract funding by $2.6 billion, or 35%. This won't even make a scratch. Brace yourselves for what's coming next.
6 comments:
Considering the number of important programs cut or neutered, and the relatively paltry savings accrued, it looks to me the the greatest achievement by DOGE (I always pronounce it as "dodgy") has been to show how much we have been helped and how much good our country has been able to do in the rest of the world for the relatively paltry outlay of tax dollars expended.
In other words, I think they are proving the exact opposite of what they set out to show.
The feeling is mutual :-)
I'm suffering a cognitive dissonance attack! How can anyone who is "Pro Life" put up with all of these attacks on programs and initiatives that exist solely to protect life (and the quality of that life)?
The cognitive dissonance is on their part, Chuckie, not yours: So-called Christian conservatives use the label "pro-life" are lying about that, just like they lie about everything else. They are "pro-birth." (And want to control women.)
The only way I have been able to see their statements as truthful, Don, is to swap “us” and “them”. By that I mean that anytime they accuse their opponents of doing some underhanded or nasty thing, they are actually telling us what they themselves are doing or planning to do. For example, “Waste Fraud and Abuse“ are much more descriptive of the activities of DO(d)GE(y) than of the federal government they are ‘purifying’. Also, “pro-life“ could not possibly be farther from the truth.
Exactly, Chuckie. Every accusation is a confession ... or, as you say, a statement of intent.
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