Donald Trump doesn’t know me personally, but he holds me in disdain—as I am a faceless average American, existing for his convenience . . . insignificant and expendable.

The headline I read a number of weeks ago read: “Trump budget seeks huge cuts to science and medical research, disease prevention.” I haven’t heard anything much from Congress on all that since he presented the proposed budget to them. They’ve been too obsessed with taking away health care coverage from millions and millions of Americans—in particular the elderly, the impoverished and the infirm.

According to the Washington Post at the time military-industrial Donald’s budget wishes became known, the National Cancer Institute would be hit with a $1,000,000,000 cut from 2017. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute would see a $575,000,000 cut. The National institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases would see an $838,000,000 reduction. The National Science Foundation, which dispenses grants to a variety of scientific research endeavors, would be trimmed $776,000,000.

The Center for Disease Control would face a $1,200,000,000 cut, trimming it by 17% to its lowest budget in 20 years.

Of course there are also many cuts proposed elsewhere—29% in the food stamp program, 13% in family welfare, 17% in Medicaid . . .

Check here for more detail: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/05/22/trump-budget-seeks-huge-cuts-to-disease-prevention-and-medical-research-departments/?utm_term=.18e630a53802

Despite his smarmy voice and continuing lies every time he can find a microphone and TV camera anywhere near, Donald Trump’s agenda shows an utter disregard for all Americans other than the comfortably affluent. He would not only refuse to protect us from disease, he would refuse us health care when we became stricken.  I don’t hesitate in the least to describe his ego-driven agenda a crime against humanity.

And it’s world wide. Donald’s budget calls for a 17% decrease in the CDC global health programs that monitor and respond to disease outbreaks around the world—such as HIV, Ebola, Zika. 

Just this past week, the White House announced it is cutting all contributions to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). That’s the lead international agency dedicated to promoting family planning and child and maternal health. In the words of a former Republican Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist who has worked extensively on global health since he retired frrom congress a decade ago: “If the U. S. chooses to drastically cut its foreign assistance, including for HIV/AIDS, nutrition and family planning, we risk reversing our strides over the past 25 years to reduce extreme poverty and disease worldwide. That potentially creates a domino effect, which could lead to nation destabilization, conflict and catastrophic loss of life.”

Check here for continued news detail: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-global-health-20170410-story.html

So what turned me on to this all of a sudden? Likely a July 6 story in The Guardian headlined “Untreatable gonorrhoea ‘superbug’ spreading around the world, WHO warns.” WHO, of course, is the World Health Organization. All known antibiotics recently have proven totally useless against this sexually transmitted infection in a number of cases.  

Many of those infected experience no symptoms. If untreated in pregnant women it can cause blindness in babies. The disease also can be transmitted to a child at birth. It generally causes infections of whatever body areas might have been used sexually. It is estimated that 78,000,000 people world-wide contract the disease each year, mostly young men and women under 25.

Just one “small” example of the desperate need for medical research in this day and age. The development of new antibiotics has fallen behind in the race against disease.

And the world obviously is not going to get any help from Donald Trump, who now instead is a major part of the problem, tipping the scales the wrong way even further with every passing day.

"Practice two things in your dealings with disease: either help or do not harm the patient."-- Epidemics, Book I, of the Hippocratic school

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And a shout-out here to the doctors and nurses who—over many, many years—have rescued me and prolonged my life well past the red line on the actuarial table.

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