-- [ From: Seymour Gross * EMC.Ver #2.5.3 ] --
Dear List Members:
Never having seen an ad such as this before, which appeared as a full
pager in Sunday's The New York Times, I thought you'd be happy and
interested to see this. It was placed by J. Morton Davis, Chairman of
the Board, D.H. Blair Investment Banking Corp. 44 Wall Street, New York,
NY 10005, Tel. 212-495-5000. He is the author of From Hard Knocks to
Hot Stocks, (William Morrow and Company 1998) and Making America Work
Again (Crown Publishers 1983). Because of the length of the ad I'm
sending this out in more than one part, and have written to Mr. Davis
telling him about the Udall bill, thanking him for the ad, and asking
for his help. You may wish to do the same.
"THE UNITED STATES MUST DRAMATICALLY INCREASE DEFENSE SPENDING.
(But not on fighter planes and aircraft carriers.)
" Who is America's greatest enemy?
" Four United States Presidents and nearly half our population perished
during the Cold War. They were not wiped out by the Communists.
Presidents Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter and Ford, too, will all be
attacked by a mortal enemy. But the life of each of these leaders is
much more likely to be threatened by a heart attack or cancer than by an
enemy's bullet.
"Statistically, it is a fact that we - and our children and
grandchildren - will be killed, not by some malevolent foreign power,
but by one or more of the following:
Heart Disease, Cancer, Stroke, Infectious Disease, Diabetes,
Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, Aids.
"These are America's real enemies, and they always have been. So when
we talk about "defense spending," we should consider which "enemies" it
is most important for us to defend against. To date, we as a nation
have failed to make fighting against this handful of diseases - which
are ravaging the lives of our citizens on a daily basis - a vital
national priority.
"The numbers, sadly, speak for themselves. The entire 1998 budget for
the National Institutes of Health, which is America's federal research
center charged with leading the country's biomedical research effort, is
$13.6 billion. By contrast, the Pentagon's budget for 1998 is $267.6
billion.
" We are spending almost twenty times more against foreign enemies than
we are against disease and illness at home. In fact, the cost of just
one CVN-77 nuclear aircraft carrier is $5,4 billion, or 40% of the NIH's
entire budget, and the cost of just the first seven B-2 Stealth bombers
was $15.4 billion, well over the NIH's budget.
continued
in part 2.............................
