denbeste@BBN.COM (06/19/89)
The current number of deaths isn't very relevant to how much money we spend on any given disease. The proper number to look at is the number of PREVENTABLE deaths 10 years down the line. Cancer and Heart disease and Diabetes cases are nearly level, or growing slowly. AIDS is following (or was until just recently) a standard population growth curve, which is very, very bad for us: A population growth curve is exponential. Remember that the *name* for AIDS hadn't even been coined ten years ago, and now upwards of a million people in the US are said to be infected with HIV. (How much upwards depends on who you are listening to, and what political point he is trying to make. :-( ) Ten years from now, if uncontrolled, AIDS will rival Cancer for deaths-per-year. Again, the amount of money spent THIS YEAR isn't very relevant. What is more relevant is the cumulative amount of money we've spent per preventable death. The U.S. government has been spending money at this kind of rate on Cancer and Heart disease as long as I can remember. They've only been working on AIDS at this level for three or four years. Did you know that virtually every convicted murderer, rapist and kidnapper in the U.S. prison system had eaten french fries sometime before comitting their crimes? It makes you wonder, doesn't it? Steven C. Den Beste, BBN Communications Corp., Cambridge MA denbeste@bbn.com(ARPA/CSNET/UUCP) harvard!bbn.com!denbeste(UUCP)
SJC9582@OBERLIN (What America Needs is A Latex Fetish) (06/20/89)
The people who released and published those stats were probably
doing it to imply that too much was being spent on AIDS, but perhaps the
figures could be used to a different purpose. I mean, if Cancer kills that
many people a year, why are we only spending x many millions on it?
On a Bulletin Board here at Oberlin, a student started an Item that
basicly had the stats for number of people who died from AIDS in the US
(45,000 at that point) and the number of people who died of measles in the
same time period - 10,000,000 worldwide (he didn't include the fact that
it was US and worldwide, or the worldwide AIDS stats, which was pointed
out by later appenders). The implication was, "whats the big deal with AIDS."
We pulled out all the same arguments - the future predictions, the idea
of an uncontrolled epidemic, of exponential growth - which are very true
and very important. But you know, ten million people dying of a disease
for which a vaccine has existed for years is preatty sad. And when you
add the figures for malnutrition and other very preventable deaths...
One of the important things we must do with the activism and insight
that is going into fighting AIDS is to broaden it beyond the one epidemic
to address other healthcare problems that need to be addressed. The cry
for universal healthcare is one that, I'm happy to say, has gone up from
many members of the AIDS activist community. We can never cure people of
AIDS if they are dying from malnutrition due to poverty, or are addicted
to heroin, or unable to see a doctor because they don't have health insurance.
Even if we had a magic bullet for AIDS, people would still be dying from
preventable conditions.
Many of the issues that are raised by AIDS also apply to things
such as cancer. I remember finding a book in a bookstore a few months back
that claimed to have investigated the way that a reasonable cure for cancer
ws being held back by the same forces of corporate profit that now hold
back potential AIDS treatment. We've seen from AIDS what the government
and corporations will do (or not do) at the expense of human lives - why
should they not be doing that with cancer? Cancer especially holds
opportunities as it is considered a largely incurable condition, and people
have gotten used to that. And besides, its usually only old people who
get it, and old people die anyway right? Has anybody explored the use of
placebo trials in cancer patients?
John Chapman
SJC9582@OBERLINmerrill@bucasb.BU.EDU (John Merrill) (06/20/89)
On 20 Jun 89 04:51:00 GMT, SJC9582@OBERLIN (What America Needs is A Latex Fetish) wrote WANIALF> The people who released and published those stats WANIALF> were probably doing it to imply that too much was being spent WANIALF> on AIDS, but perhaps the figures could be used to a different WANIALF> purpose. I mean, if Cancer kills that many people a year, WANIALF> why are we only spending x many millions on it? Absolutely. The whole argument is based on the "fixed pie" assumption---there are, after all, only so many dollars available for health-care research, so we need to allocate them carefully, goes this argument. Why should the number of dollars be limited? That's a question no-one answers. In fact, from the point of view of return on money invested---not spent---on health-care research, the country should be budgeting a whole lot more than it is. WANIALF> [talks about comparitive statistics of disease, and people WANIALF> asking "what's the big dela w/ AIDS". -- jwlm] We pulled out WANIALF> all the same arguments - the future predictions, the idea of WANIALF> an uncontrolled epidemic, of exponential growth - which are WANIALF> very true and very important. Well, actually...the exponential growth assumption is *not* true. Epidemics grow according to a so-called "sigmoid" curve---very flat initially, then a period of exponential growth, then a flattening out when the population is saturated---when the rate at which people are dying of the disease balances the rate at which new cases are appearing. It *may* be that AIDS is still exponential, but we already know that it is fully saturated (in fact, that it is rebounding) in the gay population, and that it is beginning to saturate among NYC IV drug-users. No matter what, it's shaky ground to build an argument upon. Another point. Even conceding a "fixed pie" situation, the appropriate measure of the impact of a disease is not "number dead", but, rather, something like "total number of years of life lost". By that standard, AIDS is, if anything, underfunded. AIDS tends to kill *young*, as compared to other diseases such as heart failure or cancer. Thus, an average PWA, dying at 40-ish, loses many times as many years as someone dying at 75-ish from circulatory complications arising from adult-onset diabetes. Are we investing in lives? Or what? Triage would indicate that we should allocate resources according to the payoff arising from their use. -- John Merrill | ARPA: merrill@bucasb.bu.edu Center for Adaptive Systems | 111 Cummington Street | Boston, Mass. 02215 | Phone: (617) 353-5765
jay@uunet.UU.NET (Jay Schuster) (06/21/89)
In article <25047@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> SJC9582@OBERLIN (What America Needs is A Latex Fetish) writes: >The implication was, "whats the big deal with AIDS." Isn't AIDS the leading cause of lost years of life (after traffic accidents, and maybe homicides in some places) in the US? In several cities AIDS is *the* leading cause of death for men in their twenties and thirties. -- Jay Schuster uunet!uvm-gen!banzai!jay, attmail!banzai!jay The People's Computer Company `Revolutionary Programming'
jay@uunet.UU.NET (Jay Schuster) (06/22/89)
In article <25047@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> SJC9582@OBERLIN (What America Needs is A Latex Fetish) writes: >The implication was, "whats the big deal with AIDS." I then wrote: >In several cities AIDS is *the* leading cause of death for men in >their twenties and thirties. I'm sorry, I meant unmarried men. I was thinking that when I wrote the above, but then it never made it out of my head. -- Jay Schuster uunet!uvm-gen!banzai!jay, attmail!banzai!jay The People's Computer Company `Revolutionary Programming'
hjelle@daedalus.ucsf.EDU (Brian Hjelle) (06/22/89)
> >Another point. Even conceding a "fixed pie" situation, the >appropriate measure of the impact of a disease is not "number dead", >but, rather, something like "total number of years of life lost". By >that standard, AIDS is, if anything, underfunded. AIDS tends to >kill *young*, as compared to other diseases such as heart failure or >cancer. Thus, an average PWA, dying at 40-ish, loses many times as >many years as someone dying at 75-ish from circulatory complications >arising from adult-onset diabetes. Are we investing in lives? Or >what? Politically, this claim is controversial, as it seems to diminish the value of older people's lives. I don't think we need to resort to this kind of argument to support the high level of AIDS funding. The strongest arguments, IMHO, are those that emphasize the potential for future expansion of the AIDS mortality toll. This rapid expansion is not in the cards for cancer or heart disease, and AIDS is a completely preventable illness. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Hjelle, UCSF Dept. Lab Medicine: UUCP: ...{ucbvax,uunet}!daedalus.ucsf.edu!hjelle Internet: hjelle@daedalus.ucsf.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------- -- ============================================================================= Brian | UC San Francisco | E-mail: USENET, Internet, BITNET Colfer | Dept. of Lab. Medicine |...!{ucbvax,uunet}!daedalus.ucsf.edu!brianc | S.F. CA, 94143-0134 USA | brianc@daedalus.ucsf.edu | PH. (415) 476-2325 | BRIANC@UCSFCCA.BITNET ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- "We are here because you are there." --- The Tubes, 1981 =============================================================================
OACTUP@OBERLIN (06/26/89)
To throw another issue into the debate, the most recent OUT/LOOK
has an article in it written by a Lesbian involved with AIDS
but who also has or is involved with cancer patients. I
haven't read the article, but a friend of mine described it
to me. Basicly its about the way that PWAs have many
services that people with cancer, particularly women with
cancer, do not. She cites for an example the fact that more
money and services are available for the few hundred women
with AIDS (I assume in her region) than for the
thousands of women with cancer.
Like I say, I haven't read the article, but from
the bits that were described for me, I heard another good
argument for why the US health care system needs a major
overhall.
Anybody want to start a direct action group to
agitate for better cancer treatment?
John Chapman
SJC9582@OBERLIN