Welcome back to the theater of the absurd. Today’s play is a classic. It is called 'How to Stop Progress Because a Man in a Suit Said So.' The National Institutes of Health, or the NIH, has decided to stop funding research that uses fetal tissue from abortions. If you feel like you have heard this story before, it is because you have. We are living in a loop, and the people in charge are holding the remote control.

Let’s look at the facts, even though facts are currently out of style in Washington. Fetal tissue has been used for years to study things like Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and vaccines. These are the kinds of things that kill people or make their lives very hard. You would think that the 'world’s biggest funder of medical research' would want to, you know, do research. But that is not how the world works anymore. In our modern world, science is not about what is true or what works. It is about who won the last election.

Under Donald Trump, this research was banned. He wanted to make a specific group of voters happy. These are the people who think a group of cells is more important than a person with Parkinson’s. Then Joe Biden came along. He flipped the switch back to 'on.' The scientists went back to work, probably thinking they could finally get something done. But they forgot one thing: the American political system is just a very expensive playground where the kids never learn to share.

Now, the NIH is shutting it down again. It is a surgical strike on logic. They say they will no longer fund research that uses tissue from 'elective' abortions. This is a very fancy way of saying they are afraid of the people with the loudest megaphones. It is a win for the people who enjoy yelling at buildings, and a loss for anyone who was hoping for a new medical breakthrough in the next decade.

I find the whole thing quite funny, in a dark way. We treat the NIH like it is this grand temple of knowledge. We imagine serious people in white coats looking through microscopes. In reality, it is just another government office full of people who are terrified of losing their jobs. When the wind blows from the right, they lean right. When it blows from the left, they lean left. Meanwhile, the actual science is just lying on the floor, getting stepped on by everyone.

Think about the poor scientists for a moment. Imagine spending ten years of your life trying to understand how a disease works. You are close to an answer. Then, a bureaucrat who probably struggles to open a PDF file tells you that your work is now 'morally wrong' because of a memo from the White House. It doesn't matter if the tissue was going to be thrown away anyway. It doesn't matter if it could save a million lives. What matters is the 'optics.' In Washington, 'optics' is a word they use when they are about to do something stupid but want it to look brave.

Both sides of this fight are equally tiring. On one side, you have the people who think they are fighting a holy war. They treat a laboratory like a crime scene. On the other side, you have the people who act like science is a magic wand that should never be questioned. Neither side actually cares about the sick people. They care about the 'message.' They care about the next press conference. They care about making sure the other side feels like they lost.

This is why we can’t have nice things, like cures for brain diseases. We are too busy playing a game of 'I told you so' with human cells. The NIH is just the latest stage for this tragic comedy. By banning this funding, they aren't stopping abortions. They are just stopping the possibility of something good coming from a bad situation. It is the ultimate bureaucratic move: if you can't solve a problem, just make sure nobody else can either.

As someone who has watched this circus for a long time, I can tell you exactly what will happen next. In four or eight years, the other side will win an election. They will hold a big meeting, sign a fancy piece of paper, and the NIH will suddenly discover that this research is 'essential' again. The scientists will be told to hurry up and make up for lost time. And the cycle will continue. We aren't moving forward. We are just spinning in a very expensive, very loud circle. It would be sad if it wasn't so predictable. But that is the beauty of the modern world: you never have to worry about the future, because we are too busy re-fighting the past.