Specifically, you won't find LabKitty bad-mouthing any particular candidate here on the blog. It would be unfair, given the awesome power of the Internet to sway impressionable minds. I would like you to make your own choices, gentle reader, flawed though they may be.
However, it has recently come to my attention that (Republican frontrunner and presumptive nominee) Donald Trump made a statement which poops in LabKitty's wheelhouse, as the saying goes, and I feel it would be irresponsible not to respond.
The offense?
He agreed Michael Savage [sic] should head the National Institutes of Health.
In an October 2015 interview with the right-wing radio personality, we find this exchange:
Savage: When you become president, I want you to consider appointing me to head of the NIH. I will make sure that America has real science and real medicine again in this country because I know the corruption. I know how to clean it up and I know how to make real research work again.Mr. Trump's response was equally galling:
Trump: Well, you know you'd get common sense if that were the case, that I can tell you, because I hear so much about the NIH and it's terrible.This, presumably, because NIH-funded scientists are doing all manner of things Mr. Savage disapproves of, his years of radio hate-mongering clearly leaving him qualified to comment on topics such as immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridization. If you don't understand how much of an insult this is to the men and women who have devoted their lives to medical research, then you, like Leroy Brown, are about to get a lesson. Indeed, LabKitty rates this exchange five FFS guys (a new record):
Here's some things medical research has produced in the last few decades, much of which was made possible by NIH funding and some of which Mr. Trump or Mr. Savage or someone they care about may have benefitted from. In no particular order: the pacemaker, viagra, the insulin pump, deep brain stimulation, the MRI, the CAT scan, positron emission tomography, angioplasty, the MMR vaccine, the HPV vaccine, streptomycin, IVF, SSRI, PCR, cornea transplants, organ transplants, monoclonal antibodies, stereotaxic surgery, laparoscopic surgery, heart catheterization, cochlear implants, and the human genome.
The selfless people involved in this work include Jonas Salk, who eradicated the scourge of polio and gave away his vaccine for free. And Gary Marshall, who proved peptic ulcers were caused by a bacteria using himself as a guinea pig. Just about every physician in the country did part of their training in an NIH-funded laboratory, or was trained by somebody who did. Every cardiologist. Every neurologist. Every oncologist, pharmacologist, nutritionist and dentist. Every PA and nurse. Additionally, the basic research supported by the NIH forms the knowledge base that makes private-sector biotech possible. The discoveries of NIH-funded scientists are found between the covers of textbooks and on the front pages of newspapers. They are the stuff of Nobel Prizes.
I don't understand what part of this is "terrible" to Mr. Trump, or which part isn't "real science" to Mr. Savage. It's beyond me how anyone can hate the NIH. But I do know this: You don't get to enjoy the fruits of our labor, then turn around and spit in our face for cheap political points. So from now on, you both can feel free to stay out of the hospitals and clinics that my people made possible. Consider yourself banished. The next time you're in need of treatment, go find a snake oil salesman. That should be easy enough -- just look in a mirror.
Footnote: Yes, I'm aware Savage has academic credentials (including a Ph.D. in nutritional ethnomedicine from UC Berkeley). This simply makes it all-the-more incomprehensible how he can malign the NIH.
Perhaps you think I'm making too much of this. A mountain out of a molehill. My own personal Gulf of Tonkin incident. To be sure, the exchange appears to have been forgotten by Mr. Trump. It does not constitute a major policy plank in his platform. It has not come up in the debates. Mr. Savage is not out stumping on the campaign trail, his sweaty visage lingering just off stage, licking his lips and pill-rolling his fingers in anticipation of the day when he can stick it to those liberal egghead scientists like Donald promised. There's even an entry on Snopes regarding the interview (Michael Savage for NIH director?) which they rate mostly false.
But hacker culture has a meme for this sort of thing: ha, ha, only serious. It's a verbal Get Out of Jail Free card for someone who says something so outrageous that the only way forward is for everyone to assume they weren't possibly serious. You only find out later they were. It's the weird kid we all knew growing up who always talked about setting dogs on fire. It's Terry Nichols joking that Timothy McVeigh was gonna "smoke some Okies." It's beerhall Hitler suggesting we cook all the Jews. It's Osama bin Laden promising to strike at America.
And it's Michael Savage suggesting he should pilot the NIH. The sort of idea that needs to be nipped in the bud, lest it escape from the lab and require an emergency root canal somewhere down the road. Perhaps the audacity caught Donald off guard and left him without a pithy retort, something rare for the inimitable Mr. Trump. So let me make things perfectly clear, just in case there's any lingering confusion or misunderstanding or doubt.
Michael Savage can't head the NIH because heading the NIH is a job for a grown-up. The current head of the NIH has an MD from UNC at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Yale. Contrast this with Mr. Savage, a sideshow barker who lines his pockets by telling people boogieman stories. Appointing Michael Savage to head the NIH would be like naming Ted Nugent poet laureate or having Charlie Sheen run the ATF.
There ya go, Mr. Trump. Four sentences. Four sentences that would have defused the situation, and in the process shown a little respect to the men and women working long hours and for not very much pay and who one day might save your bacon or the bacon of someone you care about. After which you could have moved on to discussing more serious policy issues. Like whether using land mines to secure the US/Mexico border might be more cost effective than building a wall.
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