http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-12/15/005l-121598-idx.html
Crusading for Cash
Patient Groups Compete For Bigger Shares of NIH's Research Funding
By Judith Havemann
Tuesday, December 15, 1998; Page Z10
Earlier this fall, volunteers for the once-staid American Diabetes
Association delivered a bombshell to the homes of 5 million Americans,
some of whom have lost kidneys or legs or eyesight to diabetes. It
compared the $1.5 billion the government shells out for research on AIDS
yearly to the $316 million spent to cure diabetes--and noted that
diabetes kills three times more people.
"Why does the government spend $7 trying to cure AIDS and breast cancer
for every $1 it spends on diabetes?" the purple-and-white card shouts in
stark black letters. "Because they Act Up and people with diabetes are
silent."
It's the charitable equivalent of going negative, and while the language
is unusually blunt, the message is hardly unique to diabetes. Americans
with prostate cancer, muscular dystrophy, Parkinson's disease and dozens
of others diseases believe that they have been cheated at the
government's research checkout counter. They are no longer willing to
wait for redress.
They think millions of patients suffering from old-fashioned killer
diseases have been shortchanged in comparison to the hot causes of the
'90s, AIDS and breast cancer. <snip>
--
Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada
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