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From: bywater!arnor!dgreen@uunet.UU.NET
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: Re: AIDS protest last night
Message-ID: <1991Jan30.053359.24673@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: 29 Jan 91 20:52:44 GMT
References: <1991Jan24.225506.18241@cs.ucla.edu> <1991Jan27.191603.24218@cs.ucla.edu>
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lever!max@uunet.UU.NET (Max J. Rochlin) writes:

|> > What exactly was the AIDS supporters' protest about? What in particular was
|> > the gripe? Perhaps I missed something.
|> 
|> The gripe is that the US has spent more in the past _week_ for Desert Storm
|> than its spend in the past _decade_ for AIDS research.  
|> 
|> It's pretty appalling to think that the United States has all this money for
|> war and we have to squeeze Congress for every red cent for AIDS research.

Indeed.  About twice as many Americans have died from AIDS as died
in the Vietnam War.  The contagion aspect makes AIDS more insidious
than cancer: estimates of 235,000 more dead by 1993 illustrates the
exponential expansion of the AIDS epidemic.  Over 1 million Americans
are presently infected.  Half are likely to be dead by 1995.  We could
easily compare these numbers with those of a nuclear attack on a major
city.  Unfortunately, the slowness of the disease has numbed us to its
overall consequences; war makes for much more interesting TV news.

I happen to support US involvement in the Iraqi war, precisely because
I worry about Hussien's genocidal potential.  I also strongly support
ACT-UP.  One can equate the magnitude of the problems; clearly they
are inequitably funded.  Thanks for making a stink!  Keep it up.

Play safe,
____
\  /Dan Greening	IBM T.J.Watson Research Center	 NY (914) 784-7861
 \/ dgreen@ibm.com	Yorktown Heights, NY 10598-0704	 CA (213) 825-2266