IconoclasT wrote:
] So the sky "isn't" falling? Hmmmmmm
]
] Add up the published claims about disease prevalence and
] the average American has at least two ailments at a time.
]
] Who's pushing the high numbers? Skeptical bio-statisticians
] blame drug companies and reporters for much of the hype. They
] also blame research institutes and disease foundations seeking
] more public spending on particular diseases.
]
] ''They always take the high-end numbers,'' said Mary Grace
] Kovar, a senior health statistician at the University of
] Chicago's National Opinion Research Center in Washington.
] ''They want the money, power and prestige'' that flow when a
] disease looks like a major problem.
]
] Former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Harold
] Varmus, who's now the president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering
] Cancer Center in New York, fought hard against using such
] estimates to justify research spending. He called it
] ''body-based budgeting'' and argued that NIH's billions should
] be targeted instead to areas that promise the greatest
] scientific and therapeutic advances.
]
] Kovar and other biostatisticians fault reporters for trying to
] make new diseases newsy.

This is the most reckless article I've read in a long time (and that's really saying something given the current state of things in this country). Essentially we're saying "people are really sick but they're not *that* sick!" Kinda like "hey, you're only *slightly* dead!"

So instead of 17 million people suffering from 'shopping compulsion', there's really only probably 2 million. Okay. That's fine. Shopping compulsion is probably not at the top of my list of things I need to worry about. When there's 45 million diabetics in this country and the rate of increase is in the double digits. Oh, and nearly half of them don't have any health care coverage, so they don't even really count cuz the data on them is probably off a bit.

Sure, I don't trust the pharma companies either, but folks, we're not talking about whether we should worry about what drugs these people are taking. More than 50% of people with chronic illnesses don't even do the BARE MINIMUM to manage their diseases. Things like monitoring their diet, quitting smoking, or God forbid, even filling their prescriptions (40% of scripts written go unfilled!). If we could just do the BARE MINIMUM, we'd probably save billions of dollars and maybe even millions of lives!

But hey, why do that? Those numbers are probably bigger than reality.