How the Big Ugly Bill Could Have Killed My Friend — And Will Now Kill Others
John Harwood has long been one of the best political journalists in America. I'm a cancer survivor, too, and I'm re-posting his piece because cancer patients might not survive this horrendous budget.
Pausing only to pack a bag, I went straight to the hospital. Fortunately for me, it was the Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
Johns Hopkins received roughly $1 billion last year from the National Institutes of Health – more than any other university. I didn’t know if Hopkins oncologists could keep AML from killing me, but knew nowhere else could give me a better chance.
Federal investment in medical research produces discoveries and treatment innovations that the private sector cannot. For any individual company, basic research doesn’t yield enough short-term profit.
I reaped the dividends from day one.
How Federally-Funded Research Helped Save My Life
My principal oncologist, Dr. Alex Ambinder, decided I needed chemotherapy immediately. How did he know that?
Because federally-funded research had shown that chemotherapy, which scientists derived after World War I from examining the effects of mustard gas on soldiers, kills cancer cells.
Dr. Ambinder, a second-generation Hopkins leukemia specialist, prescribed an intravenous chemo cocktail called “7-3.” I received one flavor (cytarabine) for seven days, overlaid with another (idarubicin) for three days.
Why that specific combination, for that duration? Because federally-funded research published in 1981 found 7-3 the best regimen for fighting AML.
My cancer soon went into remission. When Dr. Ambinder’s father, Richard, began treating patients in the 1980s, most couldn’t expect any more than that.
But federally-funded research has since handed oncologists another powerful weapon. Beyond merely containing AML, it can cure the disease outright.
The weapon sounded so drastic I initially hesitated. Then a resident on Dr. Ambinder’s team challenged me: “Do you want to play to win?”
Playing to win meant a bone marrow transplant. Scientists had discovered, first in mice and then in humans, that they could replace a patient’s diseased marrow with a donor’s healthy marrow. Hopkins oncologists, who helped develop the procedure, performed their first transplant in 1968.
At first, a form of rejection called Graft Versus Host Disease (GVHD), along with other complications, kept mortality rates high. Oncologists would not even try transplants on patients older than 40. Diagnosed at 67, I would not have qualified.
Nor did most people with AML. Reducing GVHD risks required a rare “perfect match” of immune systems between donor and patient, usually siblings. Black and Hispanic patients particularly struggled to find suitable donors.
But then federally-funded research revolutionized eligibility. The breakthrough came from cyclophosphamide, a chemotherapy drug developed after World War II from continued research into the properties of mustard gas.
Hopkins oncologist Dr. Rick Jones, building on the work of his late colleague George Santos, co-authored a 2008 study finding that high doses of cyclophosphamide administered just after transplant sharply reduced GVHD. Its effectiveness meant oncologists could use easy-to-find “half-match” donors.
“Half-match” donors, that is, like my 30-year-old daughter Leigh.
Our transplant experience on Feb. 20, 2024, proved infinitely easier than I had imagined. We drove from home to Hopkins that morning. Doctors put Leigh under anesthesia and used needles to extract some healthy marrow. Then they put it in a bag and dripped it into my arm.
We both went home that afternoon. Yes, bone marrow transplants have become outpatient procedures.
Me on the day of my bone marrow transplant.
In fact, I remained home for most of my treatment. During the early years, patients receiving transplants might spend five months in the hospital. I spent five weeks.
That’s because Hopkins oncologists had pioneered “IPOP” (in-patient/out-patient) care to accommodate people’s desire to sleep in their own beds. For 60 days after the transplant, my much-better half Patti drove me to the Hopkins IPOP clinic for blood checks.
And then, with all signs indicating success, I was done. Today, I need no more treatment or medication.
Federal investment made that possible for me and so many others. The amounts represent a pittance within the federal budget.
People at the 'Stand Up for Science' rally in Detroit, Michigan, protest against Trump’s budget cuts for scientific research as part of a National Day of Action to Defend Scientific Research Funding on March 7, 2025. Photo by: Jim West/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
“If you want billionaires to get richer and take money away from cancer research, do it,” Dr. Jones, who now directs the Hopkins transplant program, says in exasperation. “I think the billionaires already have enough money.”
Trump Cares About Trump
My medical miracle wouldn’t alter Trump’s priorities a bit. I’ve sharply criticized him in print and on television for 10 years. At home, I proudly display a framed copy of his 2020 tweet calling me “a total loser.”
Trump disdains “elites” at eminent universities like Hopkins, or Harvard. He doesn’t like former President Joe Biden, who initiated the federal “Cancer Moonshot” aimed at cutting death rates in half by 2050. He doesn’t like the foreign talent heretofore drawn by America’s scientific leadership. (My Hopkins doctors included one from Poland and another from Croatia.)
People in Washington, DC, rally against proposed cuts that could affect breast cancer research and treatment on May 6, 2025. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
The president’s sister reportedly died of cancer, as more than 600,000 Americans will this year. He has children and grandchildren. But Donald Trump cares only about Donald Trump and, as he turns 79 this week, wouldn’t likely benefit much from current research.
His predecessors from both parties cared about others enough, and believed in science enough, to invest in life-saving research. Count me among the millions who can say: thank God for that.
John Harwood is the former chief Washington correspondent for CNBC and White House correspondent for CNN. He has interviewed every president from George H.W. Bush to Joe Biden. Sign up for ‘The Stakes with John Harwood’ to get all of his columns in your inbox.
Beyond tragic. What this administration is doing to us is evil. Let me make the case: Most psychologists, psychiatrists and other licensed mental health professionals would, based on the evidence in the BBB as well as prior cuts to medical research and treatment facilities, that the proponents of these policies lack empathy for others, are selfish, self-interested and void of the constraints of a normal conscience. Making them psychopathic. They also seem, in some cases, to fit the bill for at least one other diagnosable character disorder: sadism. Sadism is not always sexual in nature as it famously was for the Marquis DeSade, after whom it was named, it applies to anyone who derives a sense of pleasure from the pain OR humiliation of others. In this case, the poor, the sick, the needy, the wounded, the elderly and those who care for them. Not to mention innocent children. What have we come to, America, that this should be the case? And what do we plan to do about it?
I’m a metastatic breast cancer patient, and for the last 25 years I’ve been getting an infusion every three weeks of a drug that wasn’t publicly approved when my cancer was first detected. Twenty five years ago I had cancer in my liver and brain and did not expect to see my children finish elementary school. I never, ever forget how cancer research saves lives. And I am enraged by the devastation this administration is causing.
Beyond tragic. What this administration is doing to us is evil. Let me make the case: Most psychologists, psychiatrists and other licensed mental health professionals would, based on the evidence in the BBB as well as prior cuts to medical research and treatment facilities, that the proponents of these policies lack empathy for others, are selfish, self-interested and void of the constraints of a normal conscience. Making them psychopathic. They also seem, in some cases, to fit the bill for at least one other diagnosable character disorder: sadism. Sadism is not always sexual in nature as it famously was for the Marquis DeSade, after whom it was named, it applies to anyone who derives a sense of pleasure from the pain OR humiliation of others. In this case, the poor, the sick, the needy, the wounded, the elderly and those who care for them. Not to mention innocent children. What have we come to, America, that this should be the case? And what do we plan to do about it?
I’m a metastatic breast cancer patient, and for the last 25 years I’ve been getting an infusion every three weeks of a drug that wasn’t publicly approved when my cancer was first detected. Twenty five years ago I had cancer in my liver and brain and did not expect to see my children finish elementary school. I never, ever forget how cancer research saves lives. And I am enraged by the devastation this administration is causing.