"We have 7,000 diseases for which we know the molecular cause. We only have treatments for 500 of them."

(D)ude: Man! Have you heard that the United States Congress actually is going to continue with their one week recess next week in order to observe the Thanksgiving holidays? The United States Congress only awaits recess after recess, doing absolutely nothing but obstruction! Are they not planning to obstruct a couple of Thanksgiving parades next week?

(M)an: Dude! We’re facing threats concentrated around Europe and Africa and on the homeland after the Paris attacks, and the United States Congress is postponing business in order to observe a week’s worth of time off from Washington, DC? Don’t the American people not understand that the GOP Republicans and their Teabag Democrats are essentially blocking the safe passage of 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States next year by enforcing an unfeasible mandate in House Bill 4038 (H.R. 4038) that requires every refugee’s security status to be personally signed off as a non-threat by not just the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, but FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper as well! 

D: Man! The GOP Republicans and their Teabag Democratic colleagues and the American Press Corps refuse to look at the refugee population as comprising overwhelmingly of women and children. The three groups are so inept and washed out of intellect- having sold their work ethic to the neoconservatives and their oligarchs- that they refuse to take on the responsibility of having constructed the tortuous destabilization of the Middle East and its surrounds leading to the fleeing refugee populations. Cannot the American people hear the experienced wisdom in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s addresses on foreign policy about building coalitions alongside understanding centuries-old sectarian differences? Don’t American voters know that their unwillingness to face the neoconservatives and their oligarchs by casting a ballot every election day against special interests and lobbyists led to two Bush Administrations and the obstructionist Republican Congress we’ve got in place since 2010’s GOP Tea Party crusade that essentially sped up the cycle of alarming death tolls in White non-Hispanics aged 45 to 54 in the United States? 

M: Dude! We need another Clinton Surplus!  

D: Man! Yes! According to Reason Magazine’s Ronald Bailey’s November 3, 2015 online article entitled Death Rate for Middle Aged U.S. Whites Anomalously Rising: Drugs, suicide, and liver disease responsible for 500,000 extra deaths since 1999…

As the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explains the significance of the findings:

Midlife increases in suicides and drug poisonings have been previously noted. However, that these upward trends were persistent and large enough to drive up all-cause midlife mortality has, to our knowledge, been overlooked. If the white mortality rate for ages 45−54 had held at their 1998 value, 96,000 deaths would have been avoided from 1999–2013, 7,000 in 2013 alone. If it had continued to decline at its previous (1979‒1998) rate, half a million deaths would have been avoided in the period 1999‒2013, comparable to lives lost in the US AIDS epidemic through mid-2015. Concurrent declines in self-reported health, mental health, and ability to work, increased reports of pain, and deteriorating measures of liver function all point to increasing midlife distress.

Despite this setback, U.S. average life expectancy of 78.8 years has continued to rise and has never been higher.

M: Dude! That’s a thorough overview you just gave, but keep in mind that these Congressional Republicans do not possess the ability to comprehend anything in writing, even when spoken. Look at how they deny climate change despite weather modification sciences like cloud seeding, or artificial rainfall needing to be looked into further by the United States of America, with China already investing hundreds of millions of dollars into this endeavor that Russia introduced to it in 1958. We need to step up and lead the way in cloud seeding, there being insufficient findings about its short term benefits and long term consequences, and vice versa, which, I believe, is in huge part due to the fact that we only invest in the two digits in terms of the millions [15 million dollars] we do put in annually.

D: Man! Did you watch the National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins’ interview with Chris Wallace? Dr. Francis Collins’ Power Player of the Week segment has aired at least twice this year on Chris Wallace’s Sunday television program.

M: Dude! Yes! The NIH budget for 2015 was 31 billion dollars, which- given the sequestration and spending cuts- amounts to the same level of financing for the NIH today as in 2003.

D: Man! Exactly! As Dr. Francis Collins stated to Chris Wallace, “about half the science is left on the table, at a time of such great promise.”

M: Dude! And what was Dr. Francis Collins’ line about how many diseases have been broken down into manageable molecular increments for the purposes of research?

D: Man! As Dr. Francis Collins addressed his powerful role in American science to Chris Wallace, “I'm a physician.  I got into medicine hoping that I could help people.  We have 7,000 diseases for which we know the molecular cause.  We only have treatments for 500 of them.  To be able to stand at the helm of this amazing place and steer that forward is a dream come true.”

M: Dude! Why do we not have treatments for the remaining 6,500 diseases for which we know the molecular cause?

D: Man! Republican obstructionism!