Let ’em eat cake! The sequester and and WIC

The Sequester and You: WIC   Read about that here.

 

World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day.  There is a big event in DC planned to pay lip service to ending this horrible disease.  Bono will be there.  President Obama will be there.  Former Presidents Clinton and Bush will be there.  It’s too bad that this comes on the heels of the announcement that for the first time since it was founded ten years ago, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria has cut funding to poor countries.  This funding is essential for programs in these countries and its absence will have devastating consequences for millions of people.  This is literally a question of life or death for millions of people.

The Global Fund now directly keeps alive 3.2 million people on anti-retroviral treatment.  (Together with other funders that means that around 6.6 million people are now on these life-saving drugs.) It has financed 8.2 million courses of TB treatment and the distribution of 190 million insecticide-treated nets to fight malaria.  We are seeing a historic turn in the progression of these pandemics.  — Jeffrey Sachs, Politicians just don’t care enough to tackle this scourge.

Health care is a basic human right.  That’s just my opinion.  That’s part of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

This is not the time to withhold funding vital to programs that are working.  Malaria prevention efforts are starting to have a real impact in places like Africa.  We tend to think of certain infectious diseases as being other people’s problems.  They strike in poor countries, far away from us.  The problem with that thinking — other that the callous nature with which we view the world through the prism of how does this impact me personally? — is that is is just wrong and shortsighted.  Infectious diseases, for instance, that kill people over there, are just as deadly when they strike here.  These are often diseases of poverty, we have that here.

Over the past year, I have been working with a nonprofit health organization — they develop and deliver medicines for infectious diseases such as visceral leishmaniasis, which is nearly 100 percent fatal when left untreated.  Like AIDS, it destroys its victims immune system.  Our military personnel are being infected because they are fighting in areas where it is endemic.  New studies also show an increasing number of co-infections – -VL & AIDS.

TB is a scourge in the US, too.  Washington, DC has one of the highest rates of infection in the nation.  What’s worse is that many cases are of the drug resistant variety, a side effect of a treatment that can take up to two years is that people don’t follow through with the full treatment.  (Topic for another day is how our antibiotic abuse is making them less effective. short version, if your doctor doesn’t give you one for the sniffles, don’t demand one.)

Other, less famous diseases such as Dengue Fever are making a comeback in the US as well.  The mosquito that carries the potentially deadly illness has been found as far north as North Carolina.  Mosquitoes don’t care about borders.

The bottom line is that if a disease can strike anywhere, it can strike anywhere.  We risk losing important ground gained over the past decade because we lack the political will to do the right thing.

Thank you, Senator and Mrs. Edwards

Again, thank you, Senator and Mrs. Edwards

 

Every woman on the planet knows they may get breast cancer.  In the US, events like the Race for the Cure have increased the awareness of the disease, its prevention and treatment.  According to www.breastcancer.org:

 

• Every three minutes a woman in the is diagnosed with breast cancer. In 2006, an estimated 212,920 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed, along with 61,980 new cases of non-invasive breast cancer. And 40,970 women are expected to die in 2006 from this disease.
• Breast cancer is the leading cancer among white and African American women. African American women are more likely to die from this disease.
• Breast cancer incidence in women has increased from one in 20 in 1960 to one in eight today.

To me, it is a sign of strength and commitment to their ideals that caused the Edwardses’ press conference and their decision to keep campaigning.  Rush Limbaugh, who just last fall accused Michael J. Fox of exaggerating his Parkinson’s symptoms for political gain, made the same claim this past week about the Edwardses. 

 

On the March 23 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh told listeners that former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) and his wife Elizabeth are "political people [who] are different than you and I." Referring to the couple's March 22 announcement that Elizabeth Edwards has Stage IV metastatic breast cancer, Limbaugh said: "[M]ost people, when told a family member's been diagnosed with the kind of cancer Elizabeth Edwards has, they turn to God. The Edwards turned to the campaign. Their religion is politics and the quest for the White House." Limbaugh later asked: "If you're [Sen.] Barak Obama [D-IL] or [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY], how do you now attack John Edwards?" Limbaugh added: "Not a problem for Hillary, the [inaudible] will find a way. But Barak, it's going to be a challenge."

            (http://mediamatters.org/items/200703230015)

 

Rush Limbaugh is no more of a journalist than Stephen Colbert, though Stephen Colbert has talent where the former has none.  The only reason this means anything is that he is right about one thing, the Edwards family is not like everyone else.  There are some people like them but when most people confront personal adversity, they deal with it differently.  They look inward and bunker down.  The differences between the Edwards family and the majority of the country does not end there.  Elizabeth Edwards has something that about 40 million people in this country do not: health insurance.  During the course of their campaigning she has met numerous people who didn’t have access to the resources she does and whose outcome when faced with the same illness, or when diagnosed with an earlier stage of cancer, would be either far less certain or just far worse.  She has also made it much easier for people who may have been scared to go in and get that lump tested or come out and tell their families and friends what they are going through.  Her bravery and dignity become all of ours.

 

This is why Senator Edwards’ campaign is so important.  His background is not that different from that of a lot of the country who grew up as poor as he did.  His family has faced tragedy before and some say that is the reason he is so passionate about helping people now.  The same can be said about their family’s reaction to the news about Mrs. Edwards’ health.  Everyone close to the Senator has said that he would end his candidacy immediately if it would hurt his wife and all media reports indicate their marriage is rock solid.  None of that is really anyone’s business except to show what troopers these people are and how far they are willing to go to make a difference.

 

The Edwards campaign has been considered a populist one.  His website highlights helping the poor, improving education in this country and getting health care to those 40 million people who do not have access to the best care, the care Mrs. Edwards will get.  These are good people who despite facing the same personal problems so many other women face, have decided to move forward.  Senator Edwards is also the first presidenial candidate to explain how he would fix our health care system.

 

From where I sit, they are heroes for this decision and regardless of how anyone votes next year they deserve our respect and prayers.

 

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