A few weeks ago, I got a call from a constituent whose 46-year-old son had just been diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer back in December, and the whole family is now wondering whether he is going to live long enough to see his kids graduate from high school. It is sad. We sort of shared the pain of fathers who lost kids, worried about losing kids. There is no need to tell anybody here that cancer sucks. That wasn't why he called. He called because his son's doctors told him that as you go through the course of this treatment, typically, chemo stops working after about 6 months. You see some tumor reduction, and then it stops working. At that point, you really need to start looking for alternatives. Typically, those alternatives mean you start getting into experimental trials. Those are no longer available because Trump and Elon Musk's cuts to NIH are forcing the local hospitals, the local universities, and the drug companies that would have done these clinical trials, to shut them down. {time} 1100 As he put it to me: As a father, I have to balance hope with reality, but it seems like all I have right now is reality. Then he said to me: Do the Republicans you work with know that they can get cancer, too? Are any of them going to stand up? Don't they get these calls from their constituents? Why don't they care? I see them all looking away. How would you have me answer that question? I tried.…
On the recordApril 30, 2025
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