In 2007, Texas voter overwhelmingly approved the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.  It’s the same sad story of a public trust and money being used to make friends of Rick Perry very wealthy.

The long and agonizing back story is that Rick Perry’s friends got grants from the fund without having their request properly vetted.  And there has been no positive results from those funds.  And Texas newspapers have been going wild researching where the damn money is going and who is getting it.  This ain’t pocket change.  This is $3 billion, with a b, that Perry amusingly calls “an assault on cancer.”

The whole thing is a disgrace, and cancer is laughing.

Texas legislators used the noblest of language to tout the 2007 bill that created the state’s taxpayer-funded, $3 billion assault on cancer, but Gov. Rick Perry now says creating wealth is a key mission of the cancer agency.

In an interview with the Houston Chronicle this week, Perry said the embattled Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas must regain public trust so it can carry out its dual mission of cure discovery and commercialization.

“The way that the Legislature intended it was to get cures into the public’s arena as soon as possible and at the same time create economic avenues (from) which wealth can be created,” said Perry. “Basic research takes a long time and may or may not ever create wealth.”

So now Governor Perry says that the purpose of the fund is to create wealth.  You know, because pharmaceutical companies ain’t making enough money by ripping off sick people enough already.

Texas Democrat Craig Eiland ain’t buying the create wealth thing.

“I believe that the purpose of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas was to research and develop cures and treatments for cancer, not act as an investment bank or hedge fund to ‘create wealth,'” said Eiland. “The state has the Emerging Technology Fund and the Enterprise Fund as business development tools.”

I mean, hellfire, why didn’t we just give Rick Perry $3 billion, with a b, to hand out to his friends and not tease with the whole false hope about curing cancer thing.

Rick Perry is evil, y’all.  He’s right out of a Stephen King novel.

It’s cancer, Rick, and you know how karma is a bitch.