Disease Possibilities are Expensive
On reading the news on Google this morning 2 articles under the Health section caught my eye. They were...
Bush seeks billions for bird flu threat response
On a Crusade to End Malaria, Gates Pledges $258 million
I decided to read a bit further and what I read made me sick to my stomach. The first article is about George Bush asking for billions of dollars ($7.1 billion to be exact) to prevent a possible (yes POSSIBLE) pandemic outbreak of bird flu.
The second article is about Bill Gates giving of his own money, not taxpayers money, to help aid research to finding a cure for malaria.
What is wrong with this picture? On the one hand you have a possible threat that hasn't materialized yet and on the other you have a disease with a death rate equivalent of "seven jumbo jets, full of children, crashing every day".
Now I totally understand that money should be poured into prevention of a pandemic because as we all know it can be extremely deadly (the Spanish Flu killed 20 million across the globe) but malaria kills a million people and sickens 300 to 500 million every year! It seems our priorities are messed up if we can spare hundreds of billions of dollars fighting a war in Iraq, tens of billions to rebuild New Orleans where 3-4 billion would have sufficed, and now 7.1 billion to prevent an outbreak that has not happened yet.
My point is this, we pay our taxes, we should care where the money goes.
Bush seeks billions for bird flu threat response
On a Crusade to End Malaria, Gates Pledges $258 million
I decided to read a bit further and what I read made me sick to my stomach. The first article is about George Bush asking for billions of dollars ($7.1 billion to be exact) to prevent a possible (yes POSSIBLE) pandemic outbreak of bird flu.
The second article is about Bill Gates giving of his own money, not taxpayers money, to help aid research to finding a cure for malaria.
What is wrong with this picture? On the one hand you have a possible threat that hasn't materialized yet and on the other you have a disease with a death rate equivalent of "seven jumbo jets, full of children, crashing every day".
Now I totally understand that money should be poured into prevention of a pandemic because as we all know it can be extremely deadly (the Spanish Flu killed 20 million across the globe) but malaria kills a million people and sickens 300 to 500 million every year! It seems our priorities are messed up if we can spare hundreds of billions of dollars fighting a war in Iraq, tens of billions to rebuild New Orleans where 3-4 billion would have sufficed, and now 7.1 billion to prevent an outbreak that has not happened yet.
My point is this, we pay our taxes, we should care where the money goes.
posted by Alex Charalambides | 10:01 AM
1 Comments:
Good point. I saw Gates on TV this weekend, speaking about how he became interested in these issues. As far as the bird flu - talking to a friend the other night, a doctor with ties to the pharmaceutical industry, he thinks the fear is a little overblown.
Part of this is the whole Katrina thing - Bush will never recover politically from another disaster like that, and so the whole bustle over the bird-flu is trying to nip incompetence in the bud - an expensive proposition indeed.
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