1. United States
2. Ariz.
3. Letter

My husband lost his job as an NIH funded computer professional with an Arizona University medical research group because of funding cuts. His last day is Feb. 28. The research he was supporting involved hundreds of studies and treatments for diseases over 40 years. One study was a huge longitudinal (over many years) study that was getting into the genetics of respiratory diseases, and developed simple inexpensive treatments for diseases that have plagued people for millennia. Those studies are now shut down. How is this a cost savings? His knowledge of every data base he ever created or worked on was such that a researcher could ask him, ‘We did a study in the early 90s on a particular subject, do you remember what that was?’ And within an hour he would send the researcher the database the they needed. In cutting his job you lose all of that knowledge. The large studies have enrolled subjects that will now be lost to follow up. You can’t simply pickup later with the same subjects, you will have lost them because they move, they don’t update their addresses, etc. An entire team of nurses, analysts, and staff are losing their jobs. Arizona and the Federal government is losing their tax money. Local businesses are losing our buying power. How does this save money???