A U.S. Navy veteran is sounding the alarm as the Trump administration's funding freeze means he'll lose access to a life-saving cancer treatment should he need it again.
Kyle Lewis was given a dire prognosis when he was diagnosed with cancer. A doctor at Johns Hopkins entered him into a clinical trial for a drug that saw some success in fighting his particular form of cancer. It saved his life and he believes it can save others, too.
Lewis talked about the work being done at the National Institutes of Health, saying, "A lot of people may not necessarily know who they are and what they do."
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After the Navy, Lewis worked as a counterterrorism analyst at U.S. Cyber Command when he was diagnosed with stage four cancer in 2020.
"I was given weeks to live," he said. NIH funded the trial, his doctor got him into and said it "saved my life."
"It is literally the only reason that I am here today, and that is now at risk, as you mentioned, [so] is clinical trials for millions of other Americans across the country who have cancer and other life-threatening diseases," he said. "And people, again, as you mentioned, who are far, far more vulnerable than I am, including children."
MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace asked what would have happened if Trump came into office at any point in his treatment.
"The drugs would have stopped, like immediately. This funding doesn't just pay for, you know, pieces and parts of it. It pays for the entire clinical trial, including things like just turning on the lights and paying the doctors to spend their time doing this," said Lewis. "So it's a complete nonstarter when this funding is shut off or frozen. Nothing happens at all."
Trump's Department of Government Efficiency initiative was created by executive order to stop "waste, fraud, and abuse" in government spending. The funding freezes and firings began before those investigations began.
See his story below or at the link here.
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