FUNDING for disease research

Dan Campbell, a member of USA Today's Board of contributors and a long-time Washington Post correspondent, penned an article for USA Today yesterday entitled "Demand more funding for Alzheimer's."  It pictured singer Glen Campbell (related?) along with twenty column inches of text.

Campbell has found similar disconnects in the system to our findings re COPD research.  For example:

From 2000 to 2010, the percentage of deaths in the U.S. from cancer, HIV/AIDs and cardiovascular diseases declined, some sharply, while deaths of people with Alzheimer's skyrocketed.   The numbers reflect the money spent by the National Institutes of Health on research.  For example, this year NIH is spending nearly seven times as much on HIV/AIDs as it is on Alzheimber's, though there are five times as many people with Alzheimer's as with HIV/AIDS.    This ratio 35 to 1, is shocking, but sadly true.

Campbell comes at the issue several ways -- the costs in the system, an aging bias in the research community (4% of Americans < 65 afflicted, almost 50% over 65 afflicted).   I don't buy this particular statistic -- it probably should be 'almost 50% of those over 65 will show symptoms at some point' which is very different, and doesn't mean that half of us will inevitable drool for many years while gibbering.   Nonetheless, the point is clear -- this is a frightening and debilitating disease that is hugely underfunded.

I love Campbell's closing idea -- demand that their U.S. representatives and senators spend one hour, without aides or professional escorts, wandering around an advanced-staage Alzheimer's ward.  Not only would that quickly loosen federal purse strings for Alzheimer's research, those purse strings would virtually disappear.  Guaranteed.

That is a great idea, and having tended for an aging parent severely afflicted by this horrible disease, I applaud the idea.  However, I am not so sanguine as to think Congress would act.  They cannot get their minds around gun control, or a million other topics -- this one seems equally elusive.

But, let's hope that a fire could be lit.  And if it burns a little brightly, maybe COPD, which kils three times as many and has one-third the research money of Alzheimer's, might also be given more hope.