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Are
you aware that the death rate from AIDS in California’s newly
infected patients and in all of Illinois’s AIDS patients has
plummeted
97% (b) and
93% (c) respectively yet AIDS still receives
10% (d) of the entire federal research budget?
The
bias towards AIDS has resulted in gross differences in funding
for your diseases. For example, our government is spending only
$40 on each patient with cardiovascular disease (CVD = heart,
stroke and hypertension), $5 on each COPD patient and $48 on
each diabetic versus
$3,084 on each AIDS patient (e).
When one is aware that every year CVD kills almost a million
Americans [930,000
(f)], diabetes kills more than AIDS and breast cancer combined
and COPD kills 126,000 compared to
18,017 (g) for AIDS one can only shout, “That’s not FAIR!”
But
that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The increase in funding for
AIDS since 1999 – just the increase – is greater than the 2005
budget for EVERY disease except cancer and CVD.
Although the above statistics involve disease research, one
cannot help but notice that at present AIDS funding levels, in
two more years one will be able to say, “The total amount spent
on all AIDS programs is
1/5th of a Trillion dollars (h).
“But AIDS is a pandemic and it deserves more funding!” AIDS
activists argue. The World Health Organization and UNAIDS report
that the AIDS infection rate is
less than 1% (i) in every country except in Sub-Saharan
African and the Caribbean. What do they need: more research
dollars? No, they need the exact same thing that has resulted in
the 97% and 93% decrease in California’s and Illinois’s AIDS
deaths: namely, the effective drugs that have been developed,
prevention education and harm reduction policies.
I
am a proud member of
The FAIR Foundation (j) – “FAIR” stands for "Fair
Allocations in Research." Along with myself, there are thousands
of others from Maine to Hawaii who are coming together through
the FAIR Foundation to alert America on the need for change in
research funding policies.
“FAIR” believes a disease’s mortality rate should be given
emphasis in determining allocations, and other secondary factors
should be utilized to insure diseases that cause great suffering
but have low mortality rates such as orphan (rare) diseases will
also
receive increased (k) dollars. Research funds should not be
allocated based on Hollywood popularity or political
correctness.
It
is now time to redirect funding to diseases that are more
deserving and currently receiving billions less than AIDS,
including the
sixteen (l) that kill over a million more Americans than
AIDS annually.
Please endorse The FAIR Foundation’s efforts to put an end to
AIDS favoritism and recommend that all citizens join them in
demanding research funding that is fair and equitable for
all.
Do
it now: JOIN The FAIR Foundation today (free) by clicking
here:
http://www.fairfoundation.org/join.htm
and
send this to your politician of choice by hitting the “GO”
button above.
a.
http://www.fairfoundation.org/update.htm
b.
http://fairfoundation.org/quiz/quizanswer.htm
c.
http://fairfoundation.org/states/illinois_AIDS_deaths.htm
d.
http://www.fairfoundation.org/nih.htm
e.
http://www.fairfoundation.org/factslinks.htm
f.
http://www.fairfoundation.org/factslinks.htm
g.
http://www.fairfoundation.org/estimated_aids_deaths2003.htm
h.
http://www.kff.org/hivaids/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=33622
i.
Op. Cit. Note h
j.
http://www.fairfoundation.org/
k.
http://fairfoundation.org/factors.htm
l. http://www.fairfoundation.org/thesixteen.htm
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