Throwing money at what ails us

Yahoo News has a story on what the World Health Organization (WHO) on the top three killers of mankind. They are (drum roll please) - heart ailments, infectious diseases and cancer. So I went over to the CDC website to see how the US stacks up against this and the CDC reports that the top three killers Heart disease, Cancer and Stroke. So, the next question I had to ask is what do we spend our money on (i.e. what does the US spend money on to combat)? So I went to the National Institute for Health and found that the US spent (this year):

on Cancer 5652 Million = 5.7 Billion
on Heart Disease - 2122 Million = 2.1 Billion
on Stroke - 340 Million

So I say to myself - hey that is respectable - but why is AIDS funding so high?  Currently the US spends 2913 Million in AIDS Funding (that is 2.9 Billion) and that does not include what we kick in to fight Global AIDS. Is this disturbing at all to anyone else? I started poking around and came across the FAIR Foundation (or Fair Allocation in Research) online at http://fairfoundation.org/index.html

FAIR advocates a better allocation of funding for bio-medical research rather than the current favoritism that is given AIDS research as there are more deaths attributed to so many other diseases than the politically charged AIDS. The Fair website also notes:

The amounts spent on the “Health Effects of Climate Change,” "Global Warming Climate Change" and "Climate Change" are greater than the funding for each of these: brain cancer, cystic fibrosis, autism, Down Syndrome, SIDS, child leukemia, cerebral palsy, COPD, Huntington's Disease, Hodgkin’s Disease, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, uterine cancer and over six thousand other illnesses. 

Why make a disease political? Because AIDS has so much star power behind it I guess. I would much rather see our money going to Alzheimer's research but that is me. FAIR's Mission seems reasonable - "fair and equitable distribution of research funds by our government for all diseases. A disease’s mortality rate shall be given emphasis in determining allocations, and other secondary factors shall be utilized to insure diseases that cause great suffering but have low mortality rates will also receive significantly increased funding." Again - seems reasonable but I guess when we discovered all these nasty little diseases, the researchers didn't bet on the fact that they needed to have Hollywood buy in to their cause to get all that Government Green (aka cash).

And one more thing...President Bush had pledged more than 15 Billion to fight AIDS in his 2003 State of the Union Address. !5 Billion. Well heads up - Obama in 2006 while speaking at the 2006 Global Summit on AIDS and the Church stated:

But our third priority should be to actually boost our contribution to this effort. With all that is left to be done in this struggle - with all the other areas of the world that need our help - it's time for us to add at least an additional $1 billion a year in new money over the next five years to strengthen and expand the program to places like Southeast Asia, India, and Eastern Europe, where the pandemic will soon reach crisis proportions.

Of course, given all the strains that have been placed on the U.S. budget, and given the extraordinary needs that we face here at home, it may be hard to find the money. But I believe we must try. I believe it will prove to be a wise investment.

So in case anyone is counting - that is another $5 Billion. But only those "rich" people are going to get a tax raise. Yeah right.

OS