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From: hollombe@ttidcc.UUCP (The Polymath)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: Shameful Statistics
Message-ID: <121@ttidcc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 29-Jan-86 16:37:12 EST
Article-I.D.: ttidcc.121
Posted: Wed Jan 29 16:37:12 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 31-Jan-86 01:47:25 EST
References: <2222@aecom.UUCP>
Reply-To: hollombe@ttidcc.UUCP (The Polymath)
Distribution: na
Organization: The Cat Factory
Lines: 35
Summary: 

In article <2222@aecom.UUCP> werner@aecom.UUCP (Craig Werner) writes:
>	Worldwide, there is one soldier for every 28 people.  There is only
>one doctor for every 1050. Put another way, there are almost 40 times as many
>soldiers in this world as doctors.

I appreciate your sentiment, but let's keep some perspective.  It's  a  lot
easier  and  cheaper  to  make a soldier than a doctor.  Also, the level of
intelligence required to be a doctor is found in a much smaller  percentage
of the population than that required for a soldier.

I suspect the figures even out considerably if you compare dollar costs  or
times  required  for  training  soldiers  and  doctors. (You could even try
summing IQ's (-: ).

A more relevant question is:  Can one doctor adequately serve 1,050 people?
My  understanding  is  there's currently a surplus of doctors in the United
States.  It's the uneven distribution that causes problems.

>	Item: Last week, during a routine training exercise two F-16 fighters
>collided in mid-air. In addition to the loss of two pilots, both planes were
>destroyed.  The replacement cost of those two planes was equal to the entire
>1985 budget for AIDS research (approximately $140,000,000).

Again, the wrong question is implied.  More relevant:  Would spending  more
than  $140 million dollars annually significantly speed up the finding of a
cure for AIDS?  I'd cheerfully trade a couple of F-16's  for  a  cure,  but
it's not at all clear that such a tradeoff exists.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe)
Citicorp(+)TTI
3100 Ocean Park Blvd.     Geniuses are people so lazy they
Santa Monica, CA  90405   do everything right the first time.
(213) 450-9111, ext. 2483
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