Perspectives

by lance

Priorities

 The political dialog of recent years has been very partisan, very emotional, and very divisive. Violent brawls have erupted over the war, global warming, stem cell research, and a host of other neocon policies. These are certainly issues to be concerned about and debated. However, I believe none of these are the most important issue we should be concerned with. The issue everyone should be concerned about has nothing to do with gay marriage or with windfall tax breaks for millionaires, or with sex scandals or corruption. It has to do with what affects you directly and personally. The issue that should be number one on everyone's list of political priorities is that which has the most direct impact on your life. I am presenting an issue here that has been totally ignored in all the public discourse even though it is perhaps the single most important item directly affecting you in the most personal way possible. The issue is finding cures for those diseases that are the cause of most of our deaths. In the near future, you and I and all those around us will die of diseases that will in the distant future be curable. Yes, in the future there will be cures for cancer and Alzheimer's and diabetes and strokes and just about everything else except plane crashes. The amount of time before these cures become available is primarily a matter of the amount of research and money spent in finding these cures. Although this should be everyone's primary concern, it is not. Why not? People are more concerned about teaching creationism than they are about about their own mortality. It seems people focus on whatever the latest media buzz happens to be rather than on their own personal health and welfare. We follow the talking heads like blind sheep. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured into a war and into improving the living conditions in Iraq, and on pork barrel projects, and on special interests. It is hard to deny that if all this money had been spent on medical research we would be many years closer to cures for cancer and all the other killer diseases. It is very possible that you will die before a given cure is developed but after the time that it could have been available to you if the required research had been completed. In other words, the political policies could indirectly be responsible for you dying sooner than you would if we had different political priorities. This will very definitely be the case for many, but not all, people.

Great progress has recently been made in understanding our biology and we are now at the point in medical knowledge where we can leverage this knowledge into an explosion of new cures and procedures. But we continue to plod along doing research in bits and pieces instead of mounting an all out war on disease. When faced with the challenges of World War II and with the challenge of reaching the moon, we responded with incredible speed and determination to accomplish our goals with astonishing effectiveness and success. In those cases we were strongly motivated by external forces. This same great wave of progress could be realized in medical research but unless there is a strong motivating force nothing will happen. The well being of the citizens is the number one goal of government yet vast sums of funding are diverted to causes of little direct impact to each of us individually. If we do not put pressure on government officials to raise the priority of medical research it will continue to move forward at a leisurely pace with no sense of urgency. If your health is your main concern, as it should be, then you need to make this known to government officials and to everyone who will listen to you. This should be your top concern in any election and in any government budget plans. Write to your representative and demand that they raise the priority of medical research to the same level as the military and other major government operations.