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Jan. 18th, 2026 04:34 pm
(no subject)
The state of pediatric brain cancer research in the US: not good. I honestly every knew most of what's covered here, but this part caught my eye:
Mike is director of advocacy for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation, a non-profit that offers family support, raises research funding, and pushes for government action.
His new vocation is to spare other families the disaster that befell his own.
Mike Henry used to work in public policy. That old life now gives him pause. In 2013-14 he was employed by Heritage Action, the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation that would, a decade later, go on to draft Project 2025.
A decade is a long time in conservative politics. Henry was at Heritage a year before Trump descended the golden staircase, and well before he had remodeled the Republican party in his image. Heritage was not as extreme then as it is today.
Still, Henry looks back on how he used to lobby for fiscal responsibility and smaller government, and ponders. Since Blair became sick, the way he perceives the role of government and the importance of caring for one another has changed drastically.
He knows now what he did not know then: that, in an instant, any one of us can be toppled from our lives and plummet to the depths.
“We had a great family, stable jobs, two wonderful children. We lost all of our savings in the first two weeks after the diagnosis. We were thrust on Medicaid, unemployment, then we lost Blair.”
Their freefall has made Henry a more empathetic person, he thinks. He understands that in America you can do all the right things, be an upstanding citizen, and still get chewed up and spat out.
“I see now that I was naive to the experience of others,” Henry said, “until I went through it myself.”
I honestly what it is, about people, in general (and I actually don't think that this only applies to conservatives), that they literally cannot put themselves in the place of others less fortunate than themselves, until it actually happens to them.
Mike is director of advocacy for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation, a non-profit that offers family support, raises research funding, and pushes for government action.
His new vocation is to spare other families the disaster that befell his own.
Mike Henry used to work in public policy. That old life now gives him pause. In 2013-14 he was employed by Heritage Action, the political arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation that would, a decade later, go on to draft Project 2025.
A decade is a long time in conservative politics. Henry was at Heritage a year before Trump descended the golden staircase, and well before he had remodeled the Republican party in his image. Heritage was not as extreme then as it is today.
Still, Henry looks back on how he used to lobby for fiscal responsibility and smaller government, and ponders. Since Blair became sick, the way he perceives the role of government and the importance of caring for one another has changed drastically.
He knows now what he did not know then: that, in an instant, any one of us can be toppled from our lives and plummet to the depths.
“We had a great family, stable jobs, two wonderful children. We lost all of our savings in the first two weeks after the diagnosis. We were thrust on Medicaid, unemployment, then we lost Blair.”
Their freefall has made Henry a more empathetic person, he thinks. He understands that in America you can do all the right things, be an upstanding citizen, and still get chewed up and spat out.
“I see now that I was naive to the experience of others,” Henry said, “until I went through it myself.”
I honestly what it is, about people, in general (and I actually don't think that this only applies to conservatives), that they literally cannot put themselves in the place of others less fortunate than themselves, until it actually happens to them.