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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33953 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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NYTimes article that wasn't paywalled for me, with my browser extensions: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/health/usaid-clinical-trials-funding-trump.html

In more bad-things-happening-due-to-USAID-stop-work-order-news*, it turns out that USAID participated in clinical trials. ("The Times identified more than 30 frozen studies that had volunteers already in the care of researchers...") Interrupting clinical trials is bad:

Asanda Zondi received a startling phone call last Thursday, with orders to make her way to a health clinic in Vulindlela, South Africa, where she was participating in a research study that was testing a new device to prevent pregnancy and H.IV. infection.

The trial was shutting down, a nurse told her. The device, a silicone ring inserted into her vagina, needed to be removed right away.

When Ms. Zondi, 22, arrived at the clinic, she learned why: The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded the study, had withdrawn financial support and had issued a stop-work order to all organizations around the globe that receive its money. The abrupt move followed an executive order by President Trump freezing all foreign aid for at least 90 days. Since then, the Trump administration has taken steps to dismantle the agency entirely.

Ms. Zondi’s trial is one of dozens that have been abruptly frozen, leaving people around the world with experimental drugs and medical products in their bodies, cut off from the researchers who were monitoring them, and generating waves of suspicion and fear.

The State Department, which now oversees U.S.A.I.D., replied to a request for comment by directing a reporter to USAID.gov, which no longer contains any information except that all permanent employees have been placed on administrative leave. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the agency is wasteful and advances a liberal agenda that is counter to President Trump’s foreign policy.

In interviews, scientists — who are forbidden by the terms of the stop-work order to speak with the news media — described agonizing choices: violate the stop-work orders and continue to care for trial volunteers, or leave them alone to face potential side effects and harm.

The Declaration of Helsinki, a decades-old set of ethical principles for medical research that American institutions and others throughout the world have endorsed, lays out ethical guidelines under which medical research should be conducted, requiring that researchers care for participants throughout a trial, and report the results of their findings to the communities where trials were conducted.

Ms. Zondi said she was baffled and frightened. She talked with other women who had volunteered for the study. “Some people are afraid because we don’t know exactly what was the reason,” she said. “We don’t really know the real reason of pausing the study.”

The stop-work order was so immediate and sweeping that the research staff would be violating it if they helped the women remove the rings. But Dr. Leila Mansoor, a scientist with the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (known as CAPRISA) and an investigator on the trial, decided she and her team would do so anyway.

“My first thought when I saw this order was, There are rings in people’s bodies and you cannot leave them,” Dr. Mansoor said. “For me ethics and participants come first. There is a line.”

Setting aside that we now won't get the scientific results of these studies, fucking people over like this** seems like counterproductive foreign policy.

*I'm posting this, because I didn't recall clinical trials coming up in the other discussions (I only learned of it this morning), so it's presumably also news to others and I thought it was different in a key way. (see footnote 2)

**I say "fucking people over," because it's not a situation in which receiving something is better than nothing, even if you didn't receive everything you expected/were promised; these test subjects risked their own health on the basis of guarantees from the trials and the USA reneged on its part of the deal. (I.E., if you're too hard-heartened a libertarian to believe in Kantian medical ethics, the USA is still in the wrong, due to not following the terms of contracts it entered.)

Can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs.

We have a massive problem. 2T deficit p.a. We have an NGO network funded by our own government working against us. And indeed, it is almost certain that any of these stories are being coordinated by current USAID employees (in part why it was absurd for the judge to issue a TRO re thr admin leave). That is, we are paying the American executive to try to undermine the American executive.

No sorry I don’t care about this. Sorry it sucks but we can’t afford it and it needs to be cut. This is the way.

I can't take Trump seriously about the deficit when he openly plans on insulting massive tax cuts that will massively outdo whatever nibbling around the edges DOGE manages to accomplish.

It's not necessarily just nibbling around the edges. There are some indications that the amount of fraud in the larger programs such as SSI, Medicare/caid, and defense might be significant. If so, the savings could easily amount to $1 trillion per year. I guess we'll see.

DOGE started with USAID because the spending was so ludicrous and so obviously geared towards sinecures for the uniparty political machine.

It's been what, 3 weeks. They've cut $100 billion so far. Give it time. If they're allowed to cook, it's going to be a lot, lot more.

There are some indications that the amount of fraud in the larger programs such as SSI, Medicare/caid, and defense might be significant. If so, the savings could easily amount to $1 trillion per year. I guess we'll see.

SS, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense amount to amount to $3.5T. do you really believe that "easily" 30% of that is waste?

They've cut $100 billion so far.

Have they cut or have they just put a temporary stop on expenditures? How many programs have actually been durably cancelled, either by the executive or by Congress?

SS, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense amount to amount to $3.5T. do you really believe that "easily" 30% of that is waste?

The US is definitely getting as least bang for their buck with military contracts. Any reason to believe that the other are different?

The military presumably wastes money on slow rolling procurement and other things of that nature. A full quarter of defense spending is salaries, and perhaps there are people drawing a salary that don't need to be there.

SS is a cash transfer program that spends less than one percent on administrative overhead, so savings from firing useless employees would be minimal. The only possible avenue for waste would be actual fraud on the part of the recipients. I doubt that this is anywhere near 30%, but I don't expect either of us could convince the other on this point. However, the longer DOGE goes on without announcing finding this fraud, the more skeptical we should be.

A full quarter of defense spending is salaries

I would go the other way. Salaries should be a bigger fraction of the military budget.

There could be massive savings also in Medicare and Medicaid if they only stomp their feet and use their massive scale to cut costs.

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