Dear Mr. or Ms. future president,

Imagine a world where animals are shoved into small, loud cages and forced to inhale fatal chemicals; or where scientists make up lies out of thin air just to please the corporate funding they have scrounged up. If you pictured some barbarous society from the 1800s, you would be mistaken, as this describes our modern medical research industry. Medical research is a cruel practice that should have definite funding cuts, because a substantial amount of their conclusions are fake, the fact that all of this research is centered around the money, and this field’s cruelty to animals.

More and more analysts are beginning to prove that a substantial amount of published research is being proved as false. These supposed to be neutral sources are using bias to express personal opinions, and support the claims of anyone who provides them financial support. “Selective or distorted reporting is a typical form of such bias. investigators use data inefficiently or fail to notice statistically significant relationships, or there may be conflicts of interest that tend to “bury” significant findings.” (Published Research Findings) This bias is unacceptable because most of the regular population who even care enough to look at these scientific findings automatically regard this information as true, because they trust scientists as professional, special out-of-this-world humans, when really, they have the same prejudice we do. The US government is currently contributing too large chunk of government money annually. “The NIH (National institute of Health) invests nearly $32.3 billion annually in medical research for the American people. More than 80% of the NIH's funding is awarded through almost 50,000 grants to more than 300,000 researchers at more than 2,500 universities, medical schools, and other research institutions in every state and around the world.” (Research For the People) That is an immense amount of cash, all directed towards a group of researchers who aren’t open with the taxpayers, whose contributions make up the majority of this government support. The US is in deep debt, and could use some of those billions of dollars paying it off, or at least using it to solve another one of the country’s issues like, the millions of people dying of starvation because they can’t afford food and have a federal government that will not provide them with the resources they need. Until medical research scientists learn to be more straightforward with the public, your policies should suspend their funding.

More and more people are also noticing that the medical research industry mainly studies and researches in areas where there would be a large cash payout for them. Take HIV/AIDS for an example. “Federal funding for HIV has increased significantly over the course of the epidemic, including by $5.7 billion (or 20%).” (Trends Over Time) The discovery of the 1st HIV/AIDS virus was in 1983, 23 years ago, and with the amount of money spent on the cure, especially since with about 19 billion dollars spent for the cause 2014. It’s certainly not cheap to find a cure, but with all of this money coming in, it would seem reasonable to make the HIV treatment somewhat affordable. “The company obtained rights to sell the drug, the only U.S.-approved treatment for toxoplasmosis, in August. It hiked the price overnight from $13.50 per pill to $750.” (Drugs Boss) This treatment could save a life, and the only way to get financial assistance with the treatment is asking an executive at the company, which brings anxiety to many would-be patients. The man in charge of it all, Martin Shkreli, is quoted as saying “The drug was unprofitable at the former price, so any company selling it would be losing money. And at this price it's a reasonable profit. Not excessive at all.” (Drugs Boss) No matter Shkreli’s objective, there has been major outrage, because this proves once and for all that Medical research is just about the money. Who wants to fund a cure where a commercial business makes money off of people with life threatening diseases? Those Billions of dollars end up making their way into the wallet of a wealthy businessman, while many who could benefit from these pills, end up dying.

Another reason to cut medical research funding is all of the cruel tests that are performed on animals. Innocent animals have beauty products sprayed in their eyes, force-fed poisons, and are forced into gas chambers where they are exposed to risky gases that can often be fatal. These animals are kept under poor conditions, are rarely fed, and often have their organs destroyed, are sawed open while alive, and slowly intoxicated to death with diets of chemicals, while having holes sawed in their skulls, and poisons injected into their bloodstream, but people think everything’s fine, because it’s quote-on-quote ‘better then testing on humans.’ These animals don’t sign up for this, and many of them lose their lives ‘for the name of science.’ “Rabbits are one of the most common victims of this abuse.In addition to being subjected to these cruel chemical tests, rabbits are used in experiments to study cardiovascular disease, skin conditions, and spinal cord injuries. Experimenters at the University of Utah cut deep incisions into rabbits’ backs and surgically inserted implants into their spines. The surgically mutilated rabbits were observed for 24 weeks and then killed.” (Rabbits in Laboratories) There are several laws for animal justice, including the .Animal Welfare Act, that states that animals should be kept in ‘reasonable’ conditions, but this act is vague on what animals it includes and is often ignored. For failure to follow a federal law, medical research institutes should see large funding cuts, until they treat the animals they have with less malevolence, or hopefully stop testing on animals all together. There are now machines and computers that can take the place of one of these chemical testing animals, but one of these computers could work all day long every day, and could start to be more cost effective than buying a new test subject every few days after you murder the previous one. And now with modern computer programs, using a computer could actually help you find more fitting results than using an animal, because every animal is extremely different, and what works on monkeys might not work on dogs or humans

Modern fields of medical science are becoming more corrupt, since the researchers who publish their work often discreetly use bias, drugs needed to survive are moved up to a maximum price, and countless animals are abused and murdered. I believe that you should punish this industry by withholding its funding until the scientists learn to be honest, not use life-saving drugs for personal gain, and stop testing on animals.

Works Cited:

"Rabbits in Laboratories." Peta. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Nov. 2016.

"Budget | National Institutes of Health." U.S National Library of Medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine, n.d. Web. 05 Nov. 2016.

Ioannidis, Joan P. "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False." PLOS Medicine:. N.p., Aug.-Sept. 2005. Web. 05 Nov. 2016.

10, 2016 Jun. "U.S. Federal Funding for HIV/AIDS: Trends Over Time." U.S. Federal Funding for HIV/AIDS: Trends Over Time. N.p., June-July 2016. Web. 05 Nov. 2016.

MailOnline, Darren Boyle for. "Drugs Boss Who Hiked the Price of Life-saving HIV Treatment by 5,000 per Cent Tried to Do the Same with Kidney Pills as He Vows to Reduce the Price... but Refuses to Say by How Much." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 28 Sept. 2015. Web. 05 Nov. 2016.