FAIR NEWSLETTER 

Bush 2005 NIH Budget Up only 2.6 Percent

Once again, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is receiving a very small budgetary increase, which, after increased expenses, is not an increase at all. (2005 Budget report From the "NIH Record") Disproportionate funding for AIDS continues as AIDS is receiving a 2.8 percent increase, which equals $80 million, whereas 2.6 percent of present diabetes and hepatitis C allocations equal only 24.6 million and 2.8 million respectively. Compare the 2005 increase for your disease of interest to $80 million for AIDS by multiplying .026 X your disease here.

Some in the professional scientific community warned the proposals could weaken the nation's research capabilities. The president's budget “threatens our progress in medicine and our position as world leader in the scientific research enterprise,” said Robert D. Wells, president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), in a statement.
 
With budgetary restraints resulting in such small increases for almost all diseases, the FAIR Foundation's allocation policy of proration is more urgent than ever before. Proration will insure fair and equitable distribution of NIH funding to all diseases, including those that do not kill many Americans, but cause great suffering.

FAIR President & CEO to Speak at 4th Annual California Hepatitis C Task Force Conference

The FAIR Foundation President & CEO, Richard Darling, DDS, will be a featured speaker at the 4th Annual California Inter-County Task Force Conference. Dr. Darling will be discussing the need for fair allocations in research by the NIH and he will be promoting organ donation. The conference will be held in the San Jose CA McEnery Convention Center on March 18th & 19th. For more information, email FAIR Foundation Board member & Task Force Chairman Bill Remak wmremak@pacbell.net.

Focus Disease:  COPD
(Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease)

•  COPD is...a slowly progressive disease of the airways that is characterized by a gradual loss of lung function. In the U.S., the term COPD includes chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive bronchitis, or emphysema, asthma (sometimes), or combinations of these conditions.

• COPD is fatal: You may have never heard of it, yet COPD is the fourth leading cause of death in the USA. About 119,000 adults ages 25 and older died from COPD in 2000. Compare to estimated AIDS deaths of 16,000 in 2002. COPD is projected to be the third leading cause of death for both males and females by the year 2020.

•  COPD is serious: "Between 1966 and 1995, the death rate for COPD increased by 71%." (Suzanne Hurd, PhD, "The Impact of COPD on Lung Health Worldwide," Chest, 117/2/Feb. 2000 Supplement). More than 726,000 COPD patients are hospitalized each year due to exacerbations, a severe attack of COPD when patients struggle to breathe.

•  COPD is Expensive: The total estimated cost of COPD in 2002 was 32.1 billion dollars. $18 billion of that was direct costs and 14.1 included morbidity and premature mortality. Medicare expenses for COPD beneficiaries were nearly 2.5 times that of the expenditures for all other patients.

• COPD is common: An estimated 10 million adults were diagnosed with COPD in 2000, but data from a national health survey suggest that as many as 24 million Americans are affected. Compare:estimated HIV/AIDS cases: 950,000.
  A separate condition, Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, is a significant contributor to COPD and Alpha-1 alone is one of the most common and serious hereditary disorders in the world and it affects individuals in all racial groups worldwide, not just in Europe as previously thought. (Frederick J. de Serres, PhD, "Worldwide racial and Ethnic Distribution of Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency," Chest/122/5/November, 2002) and de Serres "Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency Is Not a Rare Disease but a Disease That Is Rarely Diagnosed," Volume 111/Number 16/Dec. 2003, Environmental Health Perspectives.

  9-18-07 update: To view Dr. de Serres most recent impressive work on Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency (ATD) in 69 counties worldwide that demonstrates the very large numbers at risk of ATD worldwide in those countries where he has found genetic epidemiological data in the peer-reviewed medical literature, click A and B.

•  COPD, gender and race: The prevalence of self-reported COPD is higher in females than males and in whites than blacks. The COPD death rate for females more than doubled between 1980 and 2000, and the number of deaths for females surpassed the number for males in 2000,

• Fairness? The NIH's National Academy of Sciences has reported spending only $588 on each patient death from COPD Disease in research a few years ago versus $175,248 on each patient death from HIV/AIDS in 2004

• COPD and all other diseases except HIV/AIDS would receive larger research allocations under the FAIR Foundation's policies.

Facts and statistics from the NIH's National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute and the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health. For more information on COPD visit the COPD-Alert Support & Advocacy Group, COPD Yahoo group and the US COPD Coalition

Please help us in our efforts to gain fair and equitable NIH distributions for COPD and ALL diseases by joining free HERE. Member sign-up information is confidential. In addition, please forward this Newsletter on to your associates and friends.

The FAIR Foundation
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E-mail: FAIR@dc.rr.com

FAIR Mission Statement: The FAIR Foundation is dedicated to fair and equitable distribution of research funds by the NIH for all diseases, including the 16 that kill a million more Americans than AIDS. 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.

FAIR is an acronym for Fair Allocations In Research. FAIR is fair.