Jay Bhattacharya

All of these like huge advances, and yet American health has not really, by the most basic measure, improved since 2010.

The way to solve that problem is the NIH.

The NIH has the capacity to solve it.

How?

That's a complicated and diverse set of things.

But one of the things is address the barriers that make those advances available for the American people.

So I just mentioned sickle cell anemia.

So let's invest in research.

It costs $3 million for treatment.

If it cost $30,000, there would be no more sickle cell anemia in the United States.

If it cost $300, there would be no more sickle cell anemia on Earth.

Research in technologies that reduce the price of— The cost of things where we've already had breakthroughs.

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess what you mean by cost issues, like investments in research that would reduce cost of care.

I think, yes, the answer to that is yes.

Okay.

And then I'll give you another example.

The NIH has some investments in repurposing of drugs, but not sufficient level of investment.

I'll give you an example of where I think this is a very promising thing, right?

So a colleague of mine at Stanford found that the old Zostavax vaccine for shingles reduces the progression into Alzheimer's disease for a drug that's basically free and very well tolerated.

He's had a lot of trouble getting resources to run a large randomized trial to convince the world that his results is true.