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Trump Plan Eliminates a Global Sentinel Against Disease, Experts Warn

Posted on March 17, 2017

Source: The New York Times

Trump Plan Eliminates a Global Sentinel Against Disease, Experts Warn

"Nobody in the United States has ever died from an intercontinental missile strike. Over the past 50 years, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on silos, submarines, bombers and satellites to ensure that does not happen.

During the same period, nearly 2 million Americans have died from intercontinental virus strikes. The toll includes one American dead of Ebola, 2,000 dead of West Nile virus, 700,000 dead of AIDS, and 1.2 million dead of flu — a virus that returns from abroad each winter.

The federal budget to stop these threats is infinitely smaller than the Pentagon’s, and the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health, and particularly its plan to eliminate the Fogarty International Center at the N.I.H., would, global health experts say, make America vulnerable again."

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