OT: Kevorkian who?

[Sarah Fox]

Hi Horace,

> Actually, it's:
>
> Kevorkian

Noted!  :-)

It's funny the importance of a name.  If his name were John Smith, nobody
would remember him or his cause.  But "Kevorkian" is a name people remember.

> And, in addition to being structured around earning money and avoiding
> lawsuits, it is doing a simply appalling job of dealing with two epidemics
> which are engulfing the health care "system": AIDS and Addiction.
>
> Wait 'til folks figure out that AIDS has entered the general population.
> Last year 49% of all persons newly-diagnosed with HIV/AIDS were
> heterosexual.

More alarming still:  Around 1990, as I recall, when I was doing my graduate
work at the University of Texas, the university health service randomly and
anonymously tested blood samples from the student population.  For instance,
if some kid were having his blood drawn to measure liver enzymes, they would
tap a bit of blood, anonymously code it, and test for HIV, along with a
bizillion other anonymously coded samples.  The result:  About 20% of the
student population (in 1990) was HIV+.  Kinda makes ya' think!

Now more than a decade later, we're bound and determined to throw lots of
the taxpayers' spare money (not much of it left, in the wake of Cheney's
Enron and the market collapse) towards fighting HIV in Africa (old news) -- 
but not here in the US, of course, where it might benefit a few of our own.
Why?  I guess it's because we'd be helping some gay folks here in the US,
while the folks we are helping in Africa are straight (of course!) and
therefore have more right to live HIV-free.  But this is all hot air anyway,
since what Bush really meant was that we would launch a campaign to tell
those Africans to "just say no" to sex.  I guess we won't be handing out any
balloons.

Optimistically, maybe there's a cure to HIV somewhere on the moon.  :-)
That giant rock must be useful for *something*.

Even more alarming still:  The Bush Administration now proposes that the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will disqualify the lion's share of
independent scientists in the academic sector (those receiving or having
received federal research grant money) from reviewing the research grant
proposals of their peers.  What this means is that politicians and hired-gun
corporate scientists will be deciding which research gets funding.  That's a
bit like having saxophonists and politicians decide which piano you are
going to buy, based on their abundant knowledge of the instrument.  Now,
care to guess how much attention HIV will get?  Mind you, Congress has
already tried (and failed) to micromanage NIH's budget to exclude funding
for specific research projects having to do with HIV.  Perhaps this time
they will be more successful.

... and the United States of America, once the shining star of progress in
the sciences -- and our financially and politically crippled community of
keen minds, produced from what I *do* humbly regard as the best system of
higher education in the world -- will look to other countries to lead the
way towards further scientific progress.

... while we impress the world by playing a few more rounds of golf on the
moon and maybe opening a pro shop there...

<sigh>

Peace,
Sarah,
who's amazed at just how fast those Republicans can spend away our borrowed
money