Budget cuts = no Ebola vaccine

Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, said this about the Ebola crisis:  "We'd have a vaccine by now if it were not for budget cuts."

Elaborating on that assertion in an interview with Huffington Post's Sam Stein, Collins said:

"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.'   Frankly, if we had not gone through out 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.

"We would have been a year or two ahead of where we are, which would have made all the difference."

The saddest words . . . "If only . . ."

But I'll say them anyway:   If only one Supreme Court Justice had voted differently in Bush v. Gore . . . 

Because, you see, Bush would not have had the opportunity to appoint John Roberts and Samuel Alito to SCOTUS -- and we wouldn't have had the Citizens United or Hobby Lobby decisions.  The Voting Rights Act wouldn't have been gutted, which resulted in all these voter-suppression laws.

Ralph

PS:   I just saw one of the hardest hitting political ads ever, and it picks up on this same theme of budget cuts leaving us vulnerable to Ebola -- only it ties the budget cuts to Republicans.    It's worth the trouble of copying and pasting the following link:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/13/1336343/-Meet-the-toughest-political-ad-in-memory-Republican-Cuts-Kill?detail=email