Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is pushing back on an attempt by the Biden administration to erase preserving life from the mission of the National Institutes of Health.
Last week, the Florida Republican sent a letter to NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli that questioned whether her agency was moving toward adopting or promoting doctor-assisted suicide for Americans.
Two words led Rubio to suspect that.
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Last August, according to his letter, which was also signed by Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, the NIH made a subtle but significant change to its mission statement.
Currently, the NIH’s mission statement says it works “to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.”
Under the proposed change, the NIH’s new edict would say: “To seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and to apply that knowledge to optimize health and prevent or reduce illness for all people.”
Rubio sought answers as to why the NIH no longer advocates to “lengthen life.”
“Amid the rising openness of some countries, such as Canada and the Netherlands, as well as a handful of states toward physician-assisted suicide, we are concerned that eliminating the stated goal of lengthening life within the NIH’s mission statement without explanation or justification could have a negative impact on people’s existing attitudes towards the quality of life of people with disabilities,” the senators wrote.
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“People with disabilities deserve to be treated with the same dignity and respect as non-disabled people, but stereotypes and bias in the research and healthcare sectors continue to prevent people with disabilities from getting the care they need, when they need it.”
As an example of those stereotypes, the lawmakers cited a survey that found more than 80% of American doctors who responded believed that people with a “significant disability” have a worse quality of life than non-disabled people.
“Evidence suggests this could lead to discrimination in how doctors recommend physician-assisted suicide,” Rubio and Duckworth noted.
“With such pervasive, harmful views impacting so many Americans, it is imperative that the mission of the nation’s biggest funder of biomedical research be crystal clear.”
“While we applaud the NIH for recognizing the disparity in current healthcare research and delivery for people with disabilities, we remain concerned about the proposal to remove ‘lengthen life’ from the NIH’s overall mission statement,” they added.
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They asked Bertagnolli to brief them as to what led the NIH to change its mission statement, what outside groups, if any, had input into that, and what effect that change will have on the agency’s decisions for research funding.
The NIH’s reputation is already under fire from many, such as GOP Sen. Rand Paul, who believe the agency’s funding enabled the risky research that caused the COVID-19 virus.
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