The health and wealth justice scam

Lance Armstrong has an opinion piece in the WSJ today. To promote his foundation he gives a nod to the current health justice line, which is really an insult to common sense. Which is going to help the poor more, leveling out and dumbing down all the health care services, or basic research which benefits everyone?

A leading cancer specialist, Dr. Harold Freeman, says there's a disconnect between what we know and what we do. On many levels, we know how to defeat cancer; we just don't do it. Funding for cancer research. Investment in prevention programs. Access to screening. Early detection and effective treatment for everyone. Support for people living with cancer. Personal commitment to healthier living. These are the priorities we must pursue.

Social programs, prevention, screening and education, those are the elements of the walks, runs, and marathons, but yet all we hear is that we're losing the battle. Obviously, siphoning more off for social goals isn't going to keep anyone alive, is it?

When I count the members of my own family who have had cancer--my daughter, my mother, my father, my grandmother, my aunts, my uncles and one sibling--I can't find a single one who didn't have access to the best in whatever medical care was available at the time their illness was diagnosed. And with the exception of my daughter and my mother, all are on my paternal side of the family genealogy. Of the three who were still smoking when they were diagnosed (the only ones who actually died from cancer), you can't tell me they didn't know! These were bright people. It was the diagnosis, not education or screening, that stopped that behavior.

Before we let the liberals, progressives and marxists dismantle the research, academic and commercial powerhouses which will provide the basic research and technology we need to fight cancer, let's really look at all these media "gap" stories coming at us from all sides, whether in education, health care, legal system, housing, or nutrition. Let's stop turning health care into a big political battle that ignores that there are issues other than income that determine the state of our health.

I'm waiting for the research team brave enough to play the race card, to compare the health statistics of say, a lauded socialized system like Norway, with the health statistics of the American scrambled and cobbled together system for Norwegian Americans who have not married outside their ethnic heritage. Of course, they'd be unlikely to get a grant, and then probably couldn't get JAMA or NEJM to publish it.