ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 9, 1996 TAG: 9605090031
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL S. GREENBERG
ARE WE SPENDING too much on AIDS research and prevention, to the neglect of far more prevalent deadly diseases?
The question has lurked in the politics of health ever since spending on AIDS soared from a few million dollars in the early 1980s to about $1.5 billion this year for research and another $500 million for prevention.
Heart disease each year kills more than 700,000, while AIDS kills about 40,000. Yet government spending on heart research remains less than $1 billion. Cancer kills 550,000 a year, more than have died of AIDS since the disease was first identified in 1981. Cancer research runs at about $2.5 billion a year, far ahead of AIDS, but far behind on a per-patient basis.
The favored place of AIDS in federal health priorities resurfaced again recently in a Wall Street Journal article emphasizing that in the United States, AIDS remains heavily concentrated in two largely self-contained groups: homosexuals and intravenous drug users.
Nonetheless, the article correctly noted, federal prevention programs convey an erroneous impression of severe risk throughout the entire population, while failing to concentrate resources on the two most vulnerable groups. The article cited, too, the heavy funding of AIDS research relative to other diseases.
There's no doubt that AIDS' access to the federal treasury has been facilitated by influential lobbies drawn from heavily stricken groups in the performing and literary arts and in fashion. There's a youthful-celebrity element to AIDS that's generally lacking in cancer and heart disease.
For public-relations purposes, AIDS has many characteristics that highlight its fearful nature and contribute to its political appeal. Great athletes with heart disorders fade from the field. But when AIDS is the affliction, they become spokesmen for research and sympathetic public understanding. Little wonder, then, that sufferers of other diseases feel usurped by AIDS.
Nonetheless, as a lethal health threat and puzzling scientific phenomenon, AIDS has earned its place in the upper rankings of government research priorities. The paucity of heterosexual, non-drug-user cases in the United States should not inspire comfort. AIDS embodies a unique combination: deadliness, sexual transmission and lack of overtly telltale symptoms until it's too late.
The absence of the long-predicted ``breakout'' into the heterosexual population in the United States does not mean that nature has granted this country a special reprieve. The more likely factor is fear-induced caution in sexual relations as a result of government-financed education programs.
But heterosexual transmission is no rarity in Africa and Asia, where the AIDS epidemic is reportedly roaring along, abetted by sexual tourism and lack of effective screening of blood supplies. Add in an international population mixing via jet travel and there's plenty to worry about, even though the incidence of cases seems to have tapered off in the United States.
What's not widely recognized is that a major thrust of contemporary science is toward deeper understanding of basic molecular processes, rather than attention to specific diseases. Research under the heading of AIDS or Alzheimer's, therefore, can be relevant to the understanding of a variety of afflictions.
Too much for AIDS? Hardly. The AIDS battle is not over, even if there seems to be a lull in transmission in the United States.
Daniel S. Greenberg, editor and publisher of Science & Government Report, a Washington newsletter, wrote this for the Journal of Commerce.
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: J.J. SMITH-MOORE/L.A. Times Syndicateby CNB