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AIDS Favoritism
(1)
Unfair for Our Diseases
Are you aware that the death rate from AIDS has
plummeted in the USA over 90 percent in many states,
(2) including 97 percent in California’s
newly infected patients from just under 10,000 in 1992
to 232 in 2006 (as of 6/30/07)
(3). Yet AIDS still receives 10 percent
(4) of the entire federal research budget.
The bias towards AIDS has resulted in gross differences
in funding for other diseases. For example, our
government is spending only $50 on each diabetic and $29
on each patient with cardiovascular disease (CVD) versus
$3,052 on each AIDS patient. When one is aware that
diabetes kills more Americans than AIDS and breast
cancer combined, and CVD kills
872,000
compared to 16,316
for AIDS one can
only shout, “That’s not FAIR!”
(5)
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The increase in
funding for AIDS since 1999 – just the increase – is
greater than the entire 2007 budget for almost every
disease except cancer and CVD. Although the above
statistics involve disease research, one cannot help but
notice that the total amount spent on all AIDS programs
is 1/5th of a Trillion dollars.
(6)
And
what is the funding for six thousand “orphan” or rare
diseases such as
Myasthenia Gravis and Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome? The total research allocation
for all orphan diseases is $1.2
billion,
(7)
which is only $200,000, on average, for each disease.
“But AIDS is affecting more women and children than
ever, and it is a global pandemic deserving of even more
funding,” AIDS researchers and their activists state.
Heart
disease and lung cancer kill 267,000 and 68,122 women
respectively compared to 4,128 deaths in women with
HIV/AIDS
(8).
The CDC estimates 68 children under the age of 13 have
AIDS
(9)
with seven deaths.
(10)
Globally, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS
report that the AIDS infection rate is less than 1%
(11)
in every country except in Sub-Saharan African
and the Caribbean. What do they need: more research
dollars? No, they need the same solutions we have
employed: namely, the effective drugs that have been
developed, prevention education, harm reduction policies
and health infrastructures to deliver these remedies.
I am a proud member of The FAIR Foundation – “FAIR”
stands for "Fair Allocations in Research." Along with
myself, there are thousands of members and supporters in
all fifty states from Maine to Hawaii who are coming
together through the FAIR Foundation to alert America on
the need for change in research funding policies.
Our country’s top HIV/AIDS researcher, Dr. Fauci has
said, “"...the scientific advancements that have been
made in HIV [research] are breathtaking [with] highly
effective drugs to suppress HIV to the point where what
was a death sentence in the early eighties to now having
patients who look and feel well, who are leading very
productive, very gratifying lives..."
(12)
It is now time to redirect a portion of HIV/AIDS
research funding to other diseases that are currently
receiving billions less than HIV/AIDS, including the
sixteen
(13)
that kill over a million more Americans than AIDS
annually.
1)
http://www.fairfoundation.org/update.htm
2)
http://fairfoundation.org/states/hiv-aids_deaths_by_state.htm
3) http://www.dhs.ca.gov/aids/Statistics/pdf/Stats2007/Jun07AIDSMerged.pdf
4) http://fairfoundation.org/nih.htm
5) http://www.fairfoundation.org/factslinks.htm
6) http://www.kff.org/hivaids/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=33622
7) http://fairfoundation.org/nih.htm
8)
http://fairfoundation.org/CDC_AIDS_death_estimates_2001-2005.pdf
9) http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/basic.htm#aidsage
10)
http://fairfoundation.org/CDC_AIDS_death_estimates_2001-2005.pdf
11) http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0800505.html
12) http://fairfoundation.org/CNN_Fauci.wmv
13) http://www.fairfoundation.org/thesixteen.htm |
