Michele Bachmann gave a thoroughly bizarre speech at CPAC, combining the paradise lost myth (that we allegedly cared about curing diseases in the 50s, but now we don’t) with blaming government regulation, without a shred of evidence, for not curing Alzheimer’s, juvenile diabetes and cancer.
She apparently thinks that we’re not trying to cure those diseases right now, and it’s the fault of the government. And now, a word from reality: The National Institute on Aging helps coordinate scientific research on Alzheimer’s disease. And President Obama has included requests for more than $150 million more in federal funding for Alzheimer’s research in his last two budgets proposals. And the FDA has actually loosened restrictions on clinical trials for Alzheimer’s studies.
The National Cancer Institute spends about $5 billion a year on cancer research and the stimulus bill in 2009 included an additional $1.3 billion in funding. President Obama has proposed increasing this to more than $6 billion a year, but so far Congress has not approved the increase. And the federal government spends about $2 billion a year on diabetes research.
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Reginald Selkirk
March 20, 2013 at 1:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
WTF is she talking about? The government does fund research into those diseases. It would be easier to do such research of the @#%^#*^ Tea Party wasn’t fucking with the budget.
.
And since when are Republicans the party the cares about people?
Doug Little
March 20, 2013 at 1:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m sure that she was all for the ban on using stem cells in medical research, what a fucking hypocrite.
Ace of Sevens
March 20, 2013 at 1:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think she’s saying that if government funding and FDA regulation weren’t artificially skewing the market, the private sector would have found a cure by now.
Modusoperandi
March 20, 2013 at 1:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yes, the government “funds” “research”. But the government can’t do anything right. All they do is take from the Makers and give it to those lazy universities, which both steals from the Private Market (which would be doing its own research if it wasn’t hobbled by both theft, called “taxation”, and the excessive burden of any regulation whatsoever, of government) and empowers pointy eggheads in their ivory towers.
So, as you can see, Bachmann is correct.
jnorris
March 20, 2013 at 1:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The 2013 CPAC speakers list is all one needs to know about the Nov 2012 elections to diagnose why the GOP Tea Party lost the White House. Rep Michele Bachmann included, as last week’s speech showed.
Modusoperandi
March 20, 2013 at 1:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ace of Sevens, jinx!
fifthdentist
March 20, 2013 at 1:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wasn’t it one of those drugs developed in the 50s that she claimed was causing autism? Because some stranger she met after a speech told her that vaccinations cause autism.
I swear, if an actual thought ever entered her head it would explode due to the shock.
robertbaden
March 20, 2013 at 1:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Usually I hear people blaming the pharmaceutical companies of not wanting to cure people.
Doug Little
March 20, 2013 at 1:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yep, thought so.
Dr X
March 20, 2013 at 1:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
John Galt already cured all diseases, but the treatments are only available to citizens of Galt’s Gulch.
cswella
March 20, 2013 at 1:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I thought she wanted the government to regulate vaccine shots out of existence? Consistency is lost upon them.
holytape
March 20, 2013 at 1:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You people are making the mistake of assuming she is speaking in English. She is not. She is actually speaking a dialect of Old Norwegian still spoken in the Hennepin county region of the land the call Minnesota. It sound almost exactly like english but the meaning of the words are completely different. For example, to the untrained ear this speech sounds like an uneducated diatribe about health care. But to the trained ear, this is a lovely speech about how to make a delicious krumkake .
raven
March 20, 2013 at 1:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Bachmann if wildly wrong as usual. US lifespans have increased 10 years since 1955.
She is the poster person for fundie xian induced cognitive impairment. And the people who keep reelecting her.
Ben P
March 20, 2013 at 1:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If unfettered by strict FDA regulations, pharmaceutical companies would probably
(a) cut corners in finding actual cures
(b) gleefully sell people non-cures while the real cures were being developed.
garnetstar
March 20, 2013 at 1:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
There’s been big cuts in funding for basic scientific research for several decades, which the sequester has just made worse. Wingnuts disparage basic research as “curiosity-driven”, because basic research never uncovers fundamentals that are required to address practical problems, amirite?
Bronze Dog
March 20, 2013 at 1:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Relaxed regulations are allowing quackery to flourish, just like in the “good” old days of snake oil salesmen. The free market doesn’t work without regulation because making money does not require a useful treatment. Look at Burzynski. Decades of bilking cancer patients and he still doesn’t have anything worth publishing in a reputable medical journal, only deceptive marketing for people made vulnerable to bad decisions by desperation.
Also, I get this vibe that nuts like Bachmann treat science like in Civilization-type games, where breakthroughs will happen if you allocate a predetermined number of beaker icons to them. Science doesn’t work that way because we’re talking about the unknown. The only way to know how much research is needed is to have foreknowledge of the answers the research is looking for. We can make speculations about what would have sped up discoveries in the past through the powers of hindsight, but we’re talking about future discoveries that may not actually happen. We don’t have hindsight for that.
Dr X
March 20, 2013 at 2:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If only the government didn’t interfere, all psychotherapists would be curing homosexuality, just as therapists in her husband’s therapy practice have been doing for years. Maybe they’d even have a pill to cure it if the government didn’t regulate the drug industry.
anubisprime
March 20, 2013 at 2:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Doug Little @ 2
Well hell yeah…it is beyond calculation what Shrub’s ban did for the suffering of spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, hundreds of rare immune system and genetic disorders and more.
But some commentators have suggested that had the ban not happened there would have been some significant progress by now in several maladies if not a view to actual cures…but that is as far as speculation can reasonably proceed.
What is not speculation is that Bachmann and her ilk did the research absolutely no good whatsoever.
I have no idea if she had any influence on the subject at the time or even voted against it…given what passes for her ideological kant I could not actually see her promoting it.
But to pretend that the delay in development and progress is now the fault of a Democratic government that actually reversed the ban and is actively funding several lines of inquiry is typical of the brain rot and lying ability of the scientifically illiterate, and that describes Michelle to a tee so all in all… no surprises there then.
That folk nod in sage agreement with her nonsense is the real mystery, that just cannot be accounted for…so dense it is a wonder they are all not sucked over the event horizon!
Reginald Selkirk
March 20, 2013 at 2:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If that’s what she’s saying, then she is clueless as to the usual division of labour between federally funded basic research and corporate funded product-oriented research. The latter is sometimes called translational research. But it should be obvious that if your party consistently cuts basic research, there will be less to translate to the marketplace. That makes about as much sense as those idiots who wanted to defund the National Weather Service to keep it from competing with for-profit weather outlets who use NWS forecasts as their bread and butter.
Artor
March 20, 2013 at 3:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If I recall, it was the rightwing, teabagging “small-gov’t” Xtians like Michelle who pushed through a ban on stem cell research, setting back work on cancer & Alzheimer’s research by decades.
maudell
March 20, 2013 at 3:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Clearly she hasn’t thought this one through. What if the cure causes mental retardation!? Obviously, the solution is to pray very, very hard. All day. I think she’s losing her once-stellar sense of morality.
/sarcasm
thebookofdave
March 20, 2013 at 3:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s painful to witness such a horrible disease slowly take a person away, and feel so helpless to stop it.
Wha…? You mean Bachmann was always like this? My bad. Apologies to actual victims, including 6th district residents of Minnesota.
D. C. Sessions
March 20, 2013 at 3:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
cower gibbering in a corner, going mad from from exposure to its surroundings.
TGAP Dad
March 20, 2013 at 4:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh, Michele, please PLEASE keep talking into microphones in front of cameras!
d.c.wilson
March 20, 2013 at 8:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Okay, I have a question for MN’s 6th district:
I get that you’re a majority republican district, but out of all of your residents, is this really the best you could do?
Is there not one republican in your district with half a brain?
dan4
March 21, 2013 at 1:40 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Good grief, no wonder that MB hasn’t gotten over 53% in four elections in a staunchly Republican district.
Reginald Selkirk
March 21, 2013 at 10:54 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Terrific! That’s what Republicans call “growing the base.”
ambulocetacean
March 21, 2013 at 11:02 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Bachmann has a point. As Sarah Palin pointed out, it’s just silly for taxpayer-funded scientists to be playing with fruit flies when there are more important things to be done. Like the hands-on research that Bachmann’s husband conducts.
/sarcasm
Sure, it would be great to have cures for all those stubborn diseases she mentions. But it seems to me that the best thing Congress could to improve American life expectancy is to establish a public health system of the kind that exists everywhere else in the developed world. Where people don’t have to suffer and die from treatable conditions and diseases because they can actually afford to go to the doctor.
jason the cripple
March 21, 2013 at 12:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wanna know one of the reasons we haven’t cured Alzheimer’s yet? Because ignorant people like Bachmann banned stem cell research over a decade ago.