To What End?

Killing scientific research will kill people

As a cancer survivor and counsellor to people with similar diagnoses to mine, I keep an eye on the field. Last year, my medical oncologist told me in urgent and exciting tones that the promise of immunotherapy—using the patient’s immune system to effectively battle cancer—had turned a corner, and that over the next few years we were likely to learn that many cancers can be treated without radiation, chemotherapy or surgery.

In fact, just this week we’re seeing that happen. Results from a current clinical trial have surprised scientists with their efficacy. Tumors in 80% of participants disappeared. They vanished; melted away. Even though research scientists have been working on immunotherapy for decades, they were still surprised at that 80% number.

For the blissfully uninitiated, a clinical trial is a statistically valid, usually long term study, in which patients with nothing to lose volunteer to take experimental drugs and treatments in a personal effort to stave of impending death. For most, it is also a selfless act of valor, undertaken with the understanding that they are dying and are unlikely to reap the benefits of the trial, but who do it anyway, in the hope that it saves lives down the line.

There were no clinical trials for me. Luckily, my cancer, while aggressive, was treatable through the conventional means of chemotherapy followed by surgery. Just last week I read that people in the trial with my condition didn’t undergo chemo, radiation, or surgery. They watched as their tumors melted away.

It’s a miracle of modern medicine and science. Once we unlocked and charted the human genome, outcomes like this became possible. There are miles to go, but we’re on our way in earnest.

That’s why the Trump Administration’s decision to curtail all manner of medical research is baffling. To put it simply, wouldn’t you think the starving ego of the Narcissist-in-Chief would rather be heralded as the president who cured cancer, than as the one who defunded cancer research?

It’s proof to me that the President is uninterested in most policy matters, and has turned them over to the likes Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, the callous anti-immigration guy who is spearheading these illegal deportations, and Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, a proud, self-proclaimed Christian nationalist who has promised to defeat the secular state in is making good on his effort to inject religion into policy, by threatening the entire LGBTQ community. Even outside conspiracy theorists like the disreputable Laura Loomer, have sway with an inattentive president. She has Trump’s ear, and got him to fire what was left of the expert National Security Council, because she deemed them to be more loyal to the Constitution (to which they swore a public oath), than to the President (to whom they swore no public oath).

Taken together, those who have access to the President also have his trust. He remains uninterested on technical or complicated policy. He just wants to strut for the cameras, and insult the world leaders and journalists he disdains, as he enriches himself with various cryptocurrency scams that have doubled his net worth in the last year. I don’t know if he was as rich as he claimed before, but I know he is now…and getting richer.

I’d wager he tried to read Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s wet dream of a national overhaul to ensure women and minorities are again second-class citizens, that abortion is illegal nationally, and that the Constitution can be overridden by the “Unitary Executive,” a president who has Congress in his pocket, and who ignores the courts with impunity.

My guess is he found it boring, but basked in the loyalty its authors show him, so he handed policy off to them so he could continue to make favorable financial deals and work on his handicap.

They are constantly testing limits. They tried to Big-Foot the governor of Maine, but she stood up them, saying “I’ll see you in court,” where she won decisively. They tried, and initially succeeded, to intimidate big law firms that had the audacity to represent the president’s political enemies, and the universities that have the audacity to teach about the nation and the world as they are, as opposed to how they wish things were. It took a moment, but now Big Law and Big Ed are finding their gumption.

The destabilizing tariffs, though, are mostly Trump. Although there’s not an economist within shouting distance who agrees, the president is convinced tariffs are the way. Now he’s slapped them on foreign film production, but I think that by the time you read this, that distraction will be history.

I come back to the idea that this craven, empty soul would love to be acclaimed as the president who cured cancer, but his minion’s zeal in cutting to the bone will deny him that accolade.

©2025 Jon Sinton