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January 03, 2004
Stop wasting money on preventable diseases!
There is an interesting debate between Eugene Volokh and Clayton Cramer focusing on NIH statistics on AIDS spending (versus other, less "guilty" diseases), and while there isn't much I can add to the debate about "homosexual special interests," I wanted to point out that there is more to the AIDS spending debate than homosexuality or homosexual special interests. First, while AIDS is not a big threat to monogamous heterosexuals in the United States, it has major international repercussions. Many millions of people are infected and millions are dying worldwide. The disease has been shown to mutate. Thus, to ignore it in the hope that "normal" Americans will never have anything to fear not only ignores an increasingly interconnected world (like it or not), but assumes that rapidly evolving Third World forms of the disease (already more virulent than the American variety) will magically stop. Second, AIDS research is much more than simply research into how to treat or kill a sexually transmitted virus. Understanding AIDS means understanding and unlocking the mysteries of the immune system. Countless diseases including cancer, multiple sclerosis, scleroderma, psoriasis, the aging process, the search for life extension -- all of these and more depend on understanding the immune system. According to a leading researcher, AIDS research has opened up a lot of doors for us toward understanding the complexity of the human immune system in a way that no amount of ethical human experimentation would have allowed us to do.All the dying homos who've been sneered at and belittled gave themselves as willing guinea pigs to research which will ultimately benefit the ungrateful wretches who think that the sexual origin of their disease means they don't deserve the same breaks as cigarette smokers. Or beef eaters? Yeah, how about Mad Cow? For a disease which has only killed 150 people worldwide, it seems to me that there's an awful lot of fuss being made. (After all, the disease is entirely preventable.....)
And while I'm at it, will someone please tell me why it matters logically whether a disease or an illness was avoidable? Many auto accidents were avoidable; does that mean that accident victims are less deserving of treatment? Or that we should spend less on trauma research? ("Sorry, you should have looked both ways before crossing the street! No treatment for you, ha ha ha!" or "You ate too often at Burger King! No bypass surgery for you!") posted by Eric on 01.03.04 at 06:23 PM
Comments
Alan, I agree with you but my point was intended satirically. By "preventable" I meant the eating of beef! (The latter is a "choice.") As to health care, private pharmaceutical businesses have saved more people than government. So I agree with you there too. My problem is with people who confuse morality with logic. Eric Scheie · January 4, 2004 11:22 AM One can prevent "mad cow" outbreaks linked to husbandry; one cannot prevent random, spontaneous, and individual cases of prion disease in animals or humans. Eating cow is effectively irrelevant. I didn't even realize that was your point of reference. I didn't read the Volokh/Cramer debate. Of course many, perhaps most diseases have what moralizers like to call a "lifestyle" component. But the moralizers seem to forget that the number one cause of death is birth. Abortion is the only remedy for that. Lifestyle, indeed. Alan Sullivan · January 4, 2004 12:46 PM "God hates fags." - Rev. Fred Phelps Steven Malcolm Anderson · January 4, 2004 02:04 PM AIDs is also more prevalent in Africa because of some of their bizarre and barbaric ideas about AIDs. For example, many people in Sub-Saharan Africa believe that by having sex with a very young girl (6-8 years old), a man can cure himself of AIDs. That is almost certain to infect the girl because of the high likelihood of body fluid to blood contact between the infected man and the girl. And I personally find Volokh's argument (AIDs 'might' threaten a large portion of Americans someday) unconvincing. If AIDs becomes an airborne virus, yes. However barring some genetic recombination of smallpox with AIDs, that is extremely unlikely. That would not be a disease, it would be a bioweapon, and one unlikely to be developed. While I have no problem with the current level of spending on disease research in the US, I think part of the reason that AIDs (and CJD) recieve so much media interest is rarity (and percieved perventability). That leads to public outcry, which leads to politicians looking for an issue. Cancer, heart disease, and multiple sclerosis all kill more people than AIDs, but that level of commoness, and seeming inevitability, makes them less worthy of attention to the media. Sorry to go on. In conclusion, I think Cramer is wrong, but Volokh is wrong, too. Eric Sivula · January 4, 2004 02:13 PM |
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Several questionable points here. I'll go backwards: "mad cow" is a prion disease. It now appears that a rare prion mutation occurs randomly and spontaneously in higher mammals--including humans. This is not preventable. Isolated individual cases are most likely in the "unpreventable" category, unrelated to husbandry or feed; and are no cause for alarm. There was an excellent Opinion Journal on this topic by Holman Jenkins the other day.
AIDS is probably more virulent in the Third World because of poor health conditions and services. Spending on any disease, in any country, can become disproportionate to spending on other diseases when lobbying campaigns are mounted. Then there are claims of injustice. The remedy for this inequity is not more spending all around; the remedy is to get government--especially central government--out of health care.
Now I'm really in for an argument...