Medical research saved my life. It won’t be there for other Kentuckians | Opinion

Good people take care of each other. It is said that an early sign of civilized society is finding a healed thigh bone (femur) fracture in a human skeleton. A person with a broken thigh bone is helpless. They cannot forage for food. They cannot fetch water for themselves and they will quickly die without help.

A more powerful sign of civilization is found when people help others who are not relatives or even members of the same group. Jesus of Nazareth told of the “Good Samaritan.” A Jewish man was beaten by robbers and stripped of everything, including his clothing. Honored members of Jewish society, first a priest and then a Levite, saw the man and walked on. But a Samaritan found him, bandaged his wounds, and helped him to an inn, where he paid for the stranger’s care. Even though Samaritans and Jews were members of competing ethnic groups, the Samaritan recognized the common humanity in the injured Jew. Jesus rightly teaches us that the Samaritan was a good person and worthy of imitating (Luke 10:25-37).

We now live in an advanced society. One of the ways that we take care of each other, including people we will never meet, is through medical research. I have personally benefited from medical research. In 2011, I was diagnosed with an aggressive prostate cancer (Gleason 9), metastatic to bone. This cancer is like that recently found in President Joe Biden. I am being treated with advanced hormone therapy, which has been very successful. Scans and blood tests no longer detect any cancer in my body.

I am very grateful for research done by medical scientists years ago, who developed these advanced hormone therapies. Not all patients respond as well as I have, but I surely would be dead today without the therapies. I would not have married in 2020, and I would not have lived to see several of my 10 grandchildren.

That research will help men in our country and all over the world. I believe that medical research is our modern version of a healed thigh bone, a modern version of a Good Samaritan, a sign of a civilized society.

However, some do not share my viewpoint. Following the lead of President Trump, Rep. Andy Barr voted to reduce federal government support for medical research. Trump and Barr cut the National Institutes of Health budget by 40%, crippling research on cancer, heart disease, childhood lung diseases, and addiction. Trump and Barr took research money away from universities, including our own Markey Cancer Center. Without funding, young, talented research scientists will not be searching for new cures. This is like Trump and Barr dumping our medical and scientific seed corn on the ground and grinding it under their heels.

I urge Rep. Barr and other elected leaders to support medical research once again. I urge everyone to vote for representatives who believe that we should follow Jesus’s teachings and be modern Good Samaritans.

Charles T. Lutz is a doctor and former medical researcher in Lexington. His views are his own.