God was in the Room

By Wafik El-Deiry

This is a book written by a physician and scientist in 2025 about a life-changing event and its impact on the author's way of thinking. It is not an autobiography although some biographical information is shared for perspective and context. The author makes no attempt to change anyone's view of science, religion, healthcare, entrepreneurship, investing, politics, scientific integrity, career choice, or position on any issue.

In particular, the book makes no argument for anyone to believe in God but only provides the author's personal account of events that had great influence on his thinking and beliefs.

There is no intent to give medical advice.

The setting is in the United States (New England) where the author was living at the time and had been since the beginning of 2019. The event is a prolonged 8-hour elective open-heart surgery that took place at Brigham and Women's Hospital on July 30, 2025, with events leading up and subsequent to it.

By July 2025, Donald J. Trump had been in office for six months in his second term as President of the United States. Much had been happening in domestic as well as foreign policy. For the author of this book, this includes big changes at Health and Human Services (HHS), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), among others.

The author has been under consideration for the position of Director of NCI since December of 2024. In the intervening months he made the argument that the national investment in NIH and NCI has not kept up with inflation over the last 20 years, nor has it kept up with a history dating back to the 1930's of at least doubling the budget every 7 years. As such the current budget allocations threaten the US's leadership in biomedical research along with a generation of young researchers who are choosing other fields.

Dr. El-Deiry has made the point that those in charge of HHS/NIH/NCI should consider a path to restore needed investments as part of an America First agenda. There is a crisis given that current support levels for NIH/NCI are just above 10% of what they would have been with historical growth over the last two decades. There is an urgency given the burden of chronic disease, the over 2 million new diagnoses of cancer and over 600,000 deaths expected in the US in 2025, along with a number of cancer survivors that's approaching 20 million in the US.

The open-heart surgery operation did not need to be done in July 2025 and could have been postponed although it was advised not to wait till 2026 given a threat of permanent irreversible damage that would occur in the heart.

While Dr. El-Deiry was still in the hospital after his surgery, the FDA gave accelerated approval to a drug discovered in his lab in 2007 called TIC10/ONC201, Dordaviprone, or Modeyso. The drug is active against aggressive diffuse gliomas with H3K27M mutations. Modeyso is the first and only FDA-approved treatment for H3K27M-mutant diffuse midline glioma in adult and pediatric patients with progressive brain cancer following prior therapy.

No AI was used for any aspect of this book.

The book may be of interest to those who wish to learn about a physician-patient's experience with major cardiac surgery, those interested in academic medicine, cancer, biomedical research, and how the Trump Administration may have an opportunity for world leadership in science and medicine.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FPBY2677
• ISBN13: 9798262905287
• Release Date: August 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 136 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"