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Are We Spending Too Much on AIDS?
- Abstract
If there is one thing Americans seem to agree upon about AIDS, it is that we are not spending enough on the disease. “The government has blood on its hands,” reads a bumper sticker that is ubiquitous in major cities, “one AIDS death every half hour.” AIDS activists, who are fond of asserting that AIDS is “not a homosexual disease,” tell us in the same breath that the failure to spend more on it constitutes genocide against homosexuals. A recent public-opinion poll shows, indeed, that most Americans favor increasing spending on AIDS.
But consider. This past year, reported cases of AIDS in the U.S. increased only 9 percent over the previous year’s tally. The federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) of the Public Health Service (PHS) has been forced to lower greatly both its estimate of current infections and its projections of future cases. The World Health Organization, similarly, has lowered its original estimate of as many as 100 million infections by 1990 to a current eight to ten million. New York City, AIDS capital of the nation, has lowered its estimate of current, infections from 500,000 to about 150,000.
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