 |
 |
"Pd & AIDS It's great to see so much energy on the List, but with all due respect, I suggest we try to focus our energies on increasing education, awareness and research funding for Parkinson's disease. It does not serve our interests to criticize any other disease group - especially one as powerful, sensitive and organized as the AIDS community. To the contrary, we should learn from and, to the extent possible, duplicate their most effective methods - and that goes for every effective advocacy group, from breast cancer to the NRA. Allow me to offer one additional cautionary note: There are plenty of people in Washington and around the country - Members of Congress, bureaucrats, folks in the media, competing special interests, etc. - who would like nothing more than to see disease advocacy groups fight amongst themselves. We cannot - and will not - fall into that trap. We are not only fighting for lives of people with Parkinson's, we are fighting to change the spending priorities of our nation. We are making the case that medical research is one of the wisest, most compassionate and most fiscally responsible investments we can make with our tax dollars. We can't afford to undercut our argument by making judgements on who is more or less deserving. The Parkinson's community has been very effective presenting our own case and showing why we deserve more research funding than we are currently receiving. Whatever comparisons we make with the funding levels of other diseases are done only to demonstrate the inequity of treatment Parkinson's currently receives from NIH - not to denigrate the worthiness of any other area of research. We are not asking for Parkinson's to be treated any better than AIDS or cancer or Alzheimer's, but we won't accept be treated any worse. Pursuant to the posted requests, below is the data from our " Fiscal Year 1998 Funding Disparity Chart." Due to the format of the List, not all the source and footnote information is included. Please contact the Network at (800) 850-4726 for a complete copy of our funding disparity chart, or any of our advocacy materials. Disease NIH Funding # Afflicted Dollars/Afflicted HIV/AIDS $1,607,000,000 980,000 $1,640 Cancer $2,942,000,000 8,000,000 $368 Multiple Sclerosis $68,596,220 350,000 $195 Heart Disease $767,095,130 7,000,000 $110 Alzheimer's $261,750,000 4,000,000 $65 Parkinson's $41,000,000 1,000,000 $41 ----------------------- Headers -------------------------------- Return-Path: <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 11:21:18 -0800 From: "Parkinson's Action Network" <[log in to unmask]> Reply-To: [log in to unmask] Organization: Parkinson's Action Network