I never met my older brother Robert Jr. He died in the early 1950s, before I was born. I asked my mother about him only one time. She looked sad and said, 'It was something they’d just give you a shot for now.'
She and my father grieved my brother, their firstborn child, for fifty years—until the day they died.
I am ok. I got that shot. But today, when Trump cancels mRNA research, blocks cancer studies, and dismantles USAID, he is not abstractly stalling science or halting aid. He is in reality choosing death for children, grief for parents.
We must find a way. Or fifty years from now, how many young mothers and fathers will still grieve - because we failed to act when we could?
--- Randy Winn, West Seattle
