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Should Government Spend More Money on AIDS/HIV Research Than Other Diseases that Claim More Lives? Although heart disease is the number one leading cause of death in the United States, killing 948,088 people a year, one would think that it would receive majority governmental funding for disease related research, but it doesn’t. The number two leading cause of death in the United States is cancer, killing 529,904 people a year and neither does it receive majority of governmental funding. AIDS ranks 17th among killer diseases, yet it receives far more research dollars than any other disease. It receives $1.8 billion a year in funding, a third of all federal research dollars. As of 1998, AIDS received a total of $2,400 per patient while heart disease received only $108 per patient (Gene 17). Diabetes, which kills more people annually than AIDS and breast cancer combined, received $28 per patient (Gene 17). So why should AIDS research receive more federal dollars than the sixteen other diseases that claim more lives? Federal dollars for AIDS research must be limited because AIDS research is taking an unreasonable share of funding (Courrèges 4). Coleman 2 The American Heart Association reports, cardiovascular diseases have been America's number one killer for more than seventy-five years, nearing one million deaths per year. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, cardiovascular disease deaths are twenty-two times higher than AIDS deaths. Cancer is the number two killer, with the number of deaths thirteen times higher than those from AIDS. But NIH's (National Institute of Health) $1.8 billion in AIDS research is first among diseases. For every $1,000 that NIH spends on medical care, $11.15 is for heart disease, $6.18 for stroke, $3.20 for diabetes, $77.13 for cancer, but $125.87 for HIV/AIDS (Shilts pg.130-131).
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