Guest Column: Does the Gov’t Shutdown Affect You?

by Louise Carnachan

I’m alarmed by the polls that indicate that most people don’t feel the impact of the government shut down. I guess it all comes down to what services you need at the moment.

These past two weeks I’ve seen numerous issues at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center where I work. Thanks to the Tea Party-led government shut down, a stop work order was placed on the national call center for cancer information that happens to reside at the Hutch. Hopefully, you or a loved one aren’t going through a cancer diagnosis and aren’t needing information. Or your oncologist isn’t looking for a clinical trial for you. The call center employs 86 not-so-well-paid people who are currently on furlough.

As a result, the 10,000+ calls they handle per month (free of charge) for patients and clinicians go unanswered. I’m in Human Resources and know that most of these passionately committed workers have either reached the max on their vacation or will soon. Then there’s no pay. The rest of the Hutch can’t divert funds to them because the funding stream is contracts and grants — all very specific and dedicated monies.

Enrollment in clinical trials has been halted, scientists can’t share their work (which is how science is done these days), and all of this is on top of the issues the Hutch faces due to our reliance on grants from the National Institutes of Health (85% of our budget), which, thanks to the sequester, are being cut. The rumors abound about how much and when and no one is in the office at NIH to answer questions. The anxiety is palpable. The whole mess, from start to finish, is a travesty and the folks holding up the works feel none of the pain.

So, I signed a petition to The United States House of Representatives and The United States Senate that says:

“I demand that members of Congress NOT get paid during a self-inflicted government shutdown. It is morally reprehensible that hardworking federal employees [and others, I would add] will stop receiving the paychecks they need to feed their families and pay their mortgages [or rent!], while Congress still gets paid for refusing to do the job they were elected to do.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of it. As a citizen, I have felt powerless. I’m not in the legislative district (or even state) of the people whom I would most want to influence. If certain members of Congress were employed anywhere else they’d be let go for negligence and poor performance. Given the scope and impact of their performance, immediate dismissal would be warranted! This petition may not do much, but at least it makes me feel better

If you want to sign this petition, click here:

https://petitions.moveon.org/sign/tell-congress-you-have?source=s.em.mt&r_by=6719886

If you want to learn more about the science right in your own backyard, check out Mark Roth’s TED talk on suspended animation and Jim Olson’s work on “tumor paint” using scorpion venom which lights up brain tumors for surgeons (particularly useful for pediatric brain cancer patients) as well as his Project Violet, please go to www.fhcrc.org.

Thanks for listening,

Your former Orcas neighbor, Louise Carnachan