Originally posted by: Skoorb
Originally posted by: Red
Anyone who says money shouldn't be spent for a cure that eliminates millions of lives is a piece of trash.
That's like saying anyone who breaks the speed limit and gets in a car wreck should be denied health care. Yes, it is a comparable screnario. People speed, which is against the law and dangerous, yet 99.9% of the time they come out ticket-free and perfectly healthy, and noone says anything.
Then people go and have sex. Similarly, it's dangerous (yet actually legal) to have as much unprotected sex as you want. 99.9% (probably less) people come out ok, but you're saying if they happen to contract a disease from it, their lives should be assigned to imminent death.
NO. Oh, also, people should be denied healthcare for any accident they get in at all, because they should have paid more attention or been more cautious, because that is what caused the accident.
It is comporable. I call you a dumbass if you total your car and it's your fault and you bust a limb, but I'd still like to see you in the hospital. However, given the choice between you going to the hospital (not you necessarily; anybody) or a kid who was hit by his father, and the hospital has only enough resources to fix one limb, well then I'll pick the kid.
Similarly, there are limited resources and between AIDS and Cancer, I'd like to see cancer cured. As triumph said AIDs is almost entirely preventable. Other than some environmentally-influenced cancers like lung, for instance, cancer is in many cases not realistically preventable. I'll never get AIDs because I'm smart. I can't say the same about cancer.
Further, cancer kills a LOT more people than AIDs does.
AIDs will massacre Africa, but starvation is massacring africa anyway. Education and economic/social/political reform should be their meal ticket, not a feint hope of some doctor from the west coming out with a $25 vaccination.
Although cancer benefits are found from AIDs research the best benefits for cancer treatments are found from cancer research.
I wouldn't want research entirely taken away frmo AIDs, but as with any medical approach there are diminishing returns. If we throw $10 B at AIDS maybe it's solved in 50 years. If we through $50 B at it, it may be solved in 30 years instead. The same can be said of cancer, but I'd rather see those diminishing returns thrown into cancer rather than AIDs, if you've got to pick one of them.