Where Will YOU Be When The Epidemic Hits?

Today the National Institutes of Health received a petition from over 700 scientists and researchers, including two Nobel Prize recipients, protesting large cuts in general pathogen research that have been taking their toll since 2001. The cuts were designed to give greater money to bioterrorism and germ warfare research, which is important, but the cost to research on more common pathogens, more readily dangerous to the general populace, was very taxing. Cuts as much as twenty-seven percent have been levied on research to combat dangerous diseases such as tuberculosis. The veteran understands the dangers of possible bioterrorism and germ warfare (he's worn his gas mask enough), but feels there must be a better way to fund this research than taking more money away from those researchers studying to combat the more immediate threats.