I saw another post from a member of the meme brigade. This was a post of a meme that claimed DOGE cuts are gutting cancer research and people are dying. The proudly ignorant member of the brigade that posted it said, in so many words, without government funding, cancer patients will die. A number of other people liked or loved his post. It seems to me that it takes a lot of work to remain this ignorant.
Based upon figures from several sources including the American Cancer Society, in the United States alone, about $57 billion is spent on cancer research each year. Funding from the federal government ranges from $7-8 billion annually. Just under 15% of all funding. That doesn't sound like gutting the funding at all. I'm not saying it isn't significant but, gutting funding implies a much higher percentage would be gone.
Secondly, cuts to the National Cancer Institute did little to cut dollars going to research facilities. Most of the cuts were in the operational budget, getting rid of duplicative programs, staffing, and similar cuts. You would think that someone claiming to be informed would at least take the 30 seconds it took me to double check the figures. But they never do, since it interferes with their sense of moral superiority.
This next fact takes a bit more work, but I'll make it as simple as I can. Money spent on cancer research has to go through some organization before it gets to the actual researchers. If you donate directly to an organization that conducts research, more of your money typically gets to the researchers. However, if the money comes through another organization, such as the NCI, a smaller chunk of money gets to the researchers.
At one time, about 2-3 years ago, Nancy Pelosi said it the federal government had to collect $1.73 in order to give $1 back in benefits to the American people. That means the federal government would have to collect about $12 billion in order to give $7 billion to cancer research, some of which would go to that organization's administrative costs. That's only if the feds didn't give it to another NGO to distribute to actual research centers. I think even government school graduates can tell this is not very efficient.
Typically, 88-92% of each dollar donated directly to a place like St. Jude gets into the hands of researchers. Wouldn't you think that's a better, more effective system? I would, as would most of you, but the meme brigade loves their government more than cancer patients. At least that seems to be a logical conclusion.
