|
Disease |
'07 NIH Research DOLLAR$ |
Deaths Per Disease |
$ Per Patient |
$ Per Patient |
|
| HIV/AIDS |
2.9 Billion
|
16,316 |
178,046 |
3,052 |
|
| Cardiovascular Disease |
2.3 Billion
|
871,500 |
2,639 |
29 |
|
| Diabetes |
1 Billion
|
73,965 |
14,236 |
50 |
|
| Alzheimer’s Disease |
644 Million
|
72,696 | 8,859 |
124 |
|
| Prostate Cancer |
373 Million
|
27,350 |
13,638 |
192 |
|
| Parkinson’s Disease |
205 Million |
17,898 |
12,403 |
48 |
|
| Hepatitis C |
|
121 |
12,000 |
10,166 |
25 |
|
|
|||||
| Hepatitis B |
36 |
5,000 |
6,600 |
32 |
|
| COPD* |
66 |
126,128 |
500 |
5 |
|
| Breast Cancer |
716 Million |
40,910 |
17,501 |
3,967 |
|
| All Cancers |
5.5 Billion |
559,650 |
9,888 |
3,830 |
|
| West Nile Virus |
63 Million |
161 |
390,304 |
14,932 |
If you would like to be added to the RETHINKING PUBLIC HEALTH PING LIST drop me a FReepmail.
I’m not worried about the HIV virus specifically, as much as I am worried about other viruses and pathogens evolving to adopt the same mechanisms as the HIV virus.
Read the following brief on the mechanism the virus uses. Let me know if it doesn’t scare you:
http://denbeste.nu/essays/hiv.shtml
Is there a chart that shows this trend in relation to deaths/cases and/or inflation. It would be interesting to see how the trend correlates to those (ie, is it an inverse?)
I am NOT surprised. Thanks for posting this...
Since he couldn't repeal the Defense Of Marriage Act, or accomplish anything with "Gays In The Military", this will be Obamassiah's "Gift" to them, which IMHO, is what he has chosen as the "gay codeword" for AIDS by "pre-existing conditions".
If you look at the chart that GodGunsGuts posted, ANYONE employing someone with this "pre-existing condition" will IMMEDIATELY drop their company paid coverage, putting them on the taxpayer funded Obamacare dole.
(Gomer Pyle pic with "Surprise,Surprise" caption goes in this spot)
You’ll be stunned at these numbers.
And the disease has devolved - so it's no where near as dangerous as it once was... most of the people with the virus live as long as people without the virus.
There’s a real disconnect on the funding for diseases and their seriousness and funding.
COPD is very debilitating and very underfunded.
And just how big a threat is West Nile?
I’d really like to see a breakdown of how these dollars are being spent, not just for the HIV/AIDS category, but also for the other wild outliers, breast cancer, and (on a per patient basis) West Nile virus. And I’d like to see the whole federal government funding picture, not just “NIH research dollars” for the other diseases, not just the outliers. I suspect the ratio between total federal funding and NIH funding is especially outrageous for AIDS, because of a massive number of politically-motivated “educational” programs (some of which boil to down to titillating sessions with graphic instruction in how to have lots and lots and lots of sex while sorta kinda hopefully minimizing your chance of catching or transmitting HIV) and disability payments to AIDS patients (I doubt that the total funding chart you linked to includes the disability payments).
Many years ago, I had a passing acquaintance with an HIV+ friend of a friend. This young man was getting a huge housing voucher (I believe it was directly from New York State or New York City, but a good chunk may have been ultimately coming from federal funds), sufficient to pay the full cost of a comfortable apartment, based on his “disability”, and also some sort of cash welfare payments (I think at least partly federal) and food stamps, while he attended a “job training” program in “Landscape Design”. Mind you there was no way he had the qualifications or connections to get any sort of employment in actual landscape *design*, and the program sounded like it was actually preparing people to doing mowing/mulching/hedgetrimming type work — in other words, manual labor that couldn’t possibility be performed by anyone who had a legitimate physical disability, and that is normally done by people with no formal training. The fellow was out partying 7 nights a week and didn’t show the slightest sign of illness. He also seemed to have plenty of spare cash, since he shared his excitement over the new piercings he’d gotten in unspeakable places, with accompanying little bits of gold jewelry. I’d guesstimate, translated into today’s dollars, that he was directly receiving about $30,000 a year in cash, housing vouchers, and food stamps, plus Medicaid, plus the “job training” program was covered, so altogether probably over $75,000/year to the taxpayers. This was for an “AIDS” patient who wasn’t even sick yet, and if his infection continued to develop slowly, would likely survive another 15-20 years, with gradually decreasing ability to work (hardly relevant, since he wasn’t working and had no real intention of working) and gradually increasing annual medical care costs. The final tab for that particular patient probably came in at over $1 million, and I have no reason to think he was an unusual case.
Looking at NIH funding alone doesn’t give a clear picture for other diseases either, since they vary tremendously in what type of research is suited to the disease. West Nile looks like a far more insane outlier in that table than AIDS or breast cancer, but there’s probably very little federal spending related to WNV other than NIH research and some data-gathering/processing by the CDC. And there would probably be little funding at the state level, except for seasonal spraying in certain areas, and breast cancer probably only gets a bit more non-NIH federal funding than WNV, through Medicare and Medicaid (for both screening and treatment). On the other hand, as noted above, NIH-funding is probably a tiny drop in the bucket when considering the total federal taxpayers’ bill for HIV/AIDS. WNV is clearly a real public health issue, which emerged rather suddenly, creating a need for a burst of research to find out how big a threat it really is, and for which research is appropriately done under the auspices of a federal agency, and drawing on resources from other federal agencies with expertise in entomology, local/regional weather patterns, local/regional wetlands geography, immigration/customs, etc. Breast cancer, however, is suited to having a lot of research done out of large hospitals, and with a lot of private funding — not much the federal government can really add other than cash.
Funding has be come a political tool, instead of a social economic benefit…has anyone noticed that there have not been very many scientific returns in AIDs versus Cancers?
GGG, please get a science education.
Sometime after WWII, someone either got bit by a monkey, ate a monkey or screwed a monkey with SIV (simian Immunodeficiency Virus). The virus mutated into HIV. That person infected others through sex. Back in the 70s , a gay flight attendant got it and spread it around the US. The promiscuous unprotected anal and oral sex of gays helped to quickly spread it. Later,drug addicts started getting it from sharing needles with infected gay addicts. In Africa, it was spread by heterosexual sex.
I have been complaining of this for years to any and all who would listen. The problem is almost no one is listening.
Have you ever once heard this cost mentioned in all the talk of healthcare ‘reform?’ The statistics I have read are that AIDS costs est $340,000 per preson’s life in US.
AIDS is a wholly preventable disease unlike heart disease and diabetes. Yet all we ever hear about is how heart disease and diabetes are preventable. They aren’t.
The AIDS population is not heterosexuals. It is majority homosexual and minority iv drug users. It is basically a disease transmitted through anal sex. But no one is allowed to state this simple fact.