One. Hundred. Percent. Bullshit. Let me count the ways in which this is obviously, baldly and hugely misleading: 1. The data is massively incomplete, picking a hand few of charitable sources and ignoring hundreds upon hundreds more. The notion that the ice bucket challenge, as ubiquitous as it is on your Facebook walls, has been so successful as to rocket it into one of the largest medical charities is just wrong. Stupid, obviously stupid and obviously, stupidly wrong. 2. Oh, so were using diameter of these circles to denote the (already incomplete) data? Because thats hugely misleading, as area is what were looking at. So it looks like the differences are almost exponential. Theyre not. Even if the data were correct (nope) and the representation was accurate (nuh-uh) this thing would STILL be wrongheaded! Read on: 3. A dollar doesnt equal a dollar. Not every bit of research on every disease, regardless of prevalence or mortality rates, is equally as useful or valuable. Think of it this way: I want to build a house out of brick, my neighbor wants to build a house out of marble. So give us each two hundred bucks and well each get a functional roof over our heads, right? All of these diseases are in different stages of medical understanding and treatments in different phases of development. Suicide prevention could obviously use more funding (what couldnt?) but at a certain point with all things, a lot of money is a lot of money. And what you can do for suicide with 5 billion isnt too different than what you can do with 10. Efficacy is important. Needs differ. Which leads naturally to... 4. Existing treatments and research. Heart disease is the number one killer. Yep. But there also plenty of treatments available for heart disease, and we have a fairly good understanding of why it occurs and how (*note: FAIRLY good). Take a disease like ALS in contrast, were still not even clear on its method of action. There are no treatments other than palliative ones. Malaria kills way more people than even heart disease, worldwide, so why dont we pump more money into malaria research (we should, by the way, but follow me here)? Because we have effective treatments for malaria. Lack of research isnt the problem. And speaking of research... 5. Incentive. The big one. The medical and pharmaceutical industries are massive. Gigantic. Leviathan. At the end of the day, they are the ones--along with public research funds mostly allocated through universities--that determine what diseases will be researched. And, not to pick on heart disease again, but, treating heart disease is extremely profitable. Its got a huge patient base and it affects one organ system. Relatively easy to research, relatively inexpensive to treat, lots of customers. The mountains of money that private industry throws at treating and curing things like heart disease, COPD and various common cancers far outstrip all charitable giving. Meanwhile, there are plenty of diseases out there which are terribly difficult to treat. That require major medical breakthroughs that are years of expensive research away. And a lot of those diseases DONT affect huge numbers of people. Diseases like ALS. Or cystic fibrosis. Or Huntingtons. A host of autoimmune and congenital conditions far too voluminous to express here. These diseases get little to no private research. Many big companies simply leave a light on for motor neuron diseases or autoimmune conditions and say hey, weve got something coming down the pipes for rheumatoid arthritis. Maybe if it looks promising well eventually seek FDA approval to try it on your SLE. Dont hold your breath, though. Is there a proper arithmetic for properly apportioning your charitable dollars? Probably. I dont know what it would be, but it stands to reason theres a most right or perhaps least wrong answer. But it aint this. There are plenty of arguments to be made about the ethics of this that or the other charity. Plenty of comments to be had about the fad nature of this ice bucket thingy. But this chart? This chart and the argument it represents? One hundred percent bullshit.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 06:09:48 +0000
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