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From: Jocelyn.Lovell@f415.n259.z1.fidonet.org (Jocelyn Lovell)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: SUPPORT!
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Date: 5 Jun 90 17:37:34 GMT
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Index Number: 8660

[This is from the Spinal Injury Conference]

Elizabeth,
   The U.S. Senate is well aware of paralysis and the Spinal Cord Society,
A lot of people look to government for miracles.  It's gimme this and
gimme that.  They are hardly to be blamed.  The government certainly
ladles out a good deal--but little that might be used to rock any boats.
Whatever, the notion that government can or likely will solve this 
problem
is probably a pipe dream.  In anything but the most dire emergencies the
efforts of government are hopelessly politicized and defocused.  While
government has supported much basic research of value, there is never any
follow-through to a conclusion aimed at human welfare, probably because
that would be an "unwarranted interference with private enterprise".
Research funds always go through a government bureaucracy.  There, as in
any bureaucracy, people have their own priorities which seldom have much
to do with the public interest.  After this laundering it is doubtful
very much would get done.  It is the same here in Canada.
   In a free society it is the job of people to use their hard fought for
rights to citizen advocacy and reform.  In North America and a few other
areas are just about the last places on Earth where this can be done.
It is up to the paralyzed to understand, to help themselves, and to help
medicine help itself.  Medicine cannot create public demand or generate
understanding and support for itself.  Most especially it cannot do that
if there is a wide perception it stands opposed to progress.  Like it or
not, support for the goal of progress is the job of us all.
   If anyone can look at the SCS record in the past 5 years and doubt the
impact only a few thousand hard working volunteers can have, then they
are blind indeed to reality.  Still blinder are they if they think
improvement can always be left up to the other guy.

   You can support the cause, subscribe to the monthy SCS Newsletter,
$30.00 per year, to Wendell Road, Fergus Falls, Minnesota, 56537, USA.
It will give you up-to-date information on cure research.
.............Jocelyn

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