Karol:

The 1918 influenza pandemic killed over 600,000 Americans and something like 60 million people worldwide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Flu

Scientists believe that this strain of flu virus jumped directly to people from birds. People are afraid of a repeat of 1918 with the new bird flu spreading. Spending billions to contain this possiblity is not necessarily unreasonable.

There is a chickens coming home to roost joke in here somewhere...

No, dummy. Again, I knew when I voted for Bush that he was a big spender. I just knew, and still know, that Kerry would've been even bigger. I would vote for Bush again right this minute.

Not to worry. There is a virtual civil war in the Senate.
Minority Leader Harry Reid has called a closed intelligence session without the knowledge of Majority Leader Frist. The Democrats are using the Libby indictment to indict the intelligence that led up to Iraqi Freedom. The Senate is effectively shut down.

It could be worse. Europe is burning.

I dunno. It seems to me that the question shouldn't be whether we're spending too much money. The question should be whether the stuff we're spending money on is important. When your neighbor's house is burning down, you don't stop to estimate how much your water bill is going to be next month. You just put it out and deal with the cost later.

Now, I'm not saying that the flu is necessarily a house-on-fire situation. I'm just saying that that's the question we ought to be asking. Clearly some smart folks think it is, or that it has the potential to be.

I think too many folks suffer from sticker shock. I'm not saying that I blame them or that they're wrong or anything. I'm just saying that we shouldn't panic about spending $7 billion on flu epidemic prevention measures until we've added up the cost of 60 million Americans quarantined with a highly infectious virus plus a few hundred thousand dead from it and multiplied it times our best guess of the likelihood of that coming to pass. If the choice is $7 billion now version $700 billion net later, the cliché "can we afford not to?" becomes pretty literal.

Canada found the bird flu in wild birds. The cost of chicken and other birds is going to rise.

The only meat left if pork (remember mad cow) and that was the dirtest meat to begin with.

to be completely cruel...as to the lung cancer comment - how many of those deaths are realted to smoking. As to the aids comment - how many of those deathers were preventable by keeping your pants on.

Jeff is right. Spending on prevention against a pandemic of this sort is something that has to be done. We could look at the details of the plan to see if the money is going to be used effectively sure. But I don't see this as a reason to be upset with Bush over spending in general. There are plenty of other reasons for that.

J&J are right. Further to the point, research spending on cancers shouldn't be compared to research spending on epidemic disease. Is it wrong that Breast Cancer gets so much and Lung Cancer so little... sure. And there are different arguments there... one is a PC-feel good thing, the other a nasty killer that, rightly or wrongly, is seen as brought upon oneself for sucking down a pack and a half a day for forty years (and yes, the people who don't smoke suffer because of that)

But cancer ain't contagious and can't suddenly wipe out huge swaths of the population.

Not to be a total radical, but if we did not grant patent-monoplies to companies in these particular ultra-dangerous situations, we would have to spend a whole lot less to save a whole lot more people.

Not to be, you know, right or anything, but if we didn't offer the legal protections we give to inventors and innovators, we wouldn't have these wonder-drugs that make life in the 21st century so dramatically different from the way things were 300 years ago.

What, do you think oseltamivir grows on trees, or that the folks at Gilead and Roche invested hundreds of millions of dollars in its development because they were bored and looking for something fun to do? Or that the shareholders whose money was used in that development aren't both legally and morally entitled to profit from it?

Because that's really what it all boils down to, you know? In disputes over the policy of patent law, it almost always boils down to a guy on one side who deeply, sincerely believes but will not openly admit that it's just plain morally wrong to take a profit.

Social conservative: Perhaps.
Fiscal conservative: Well... nuh uh.

We're STILL spending that much on AIDS?

Jeff is right about patents there also. But that isn't to say patent abuse isn't a real concern. Much more so with the abuse of copyright law. There can and should be a rational discussion of copyright (and to a much lesser degree patent) reform that recognizes from the get go that the incentive to profit for inventors and investors in r&d is critical and is good.

Ken,

Cancer might not be contagious, but over time it has and will continue to wipe out "huge swaths" of people if it continues to be swept aside when a newer, trendier fright monster comes along like AIDS or Bird Flu. Yes we shouldn't be left unprepared for potential pandemics, but to casually dismiss the deaths of at least half a million people in the U.S. alone this year to cancer as somehow less threatening than something that hasn't even happened yet is falling into an easy trap.
I do agree that Breast Cancer has a higher profile than other cancers, and this can be to their detriment. They have managed to de-stigmatise it, people are no longer afraid or unwilling to talk about it. It is frustrating for someone with a lesser known disease to understand why their disease receives less funding, and most people do not even have a clue what it is. Lymphoma is the second fastest rising cancer (to skin cancer), has no known cause, and kills at least half of everyone who gets it. Yet is there a Lymphoma month, or pretty jewellery? Well technically yes but you won't find them in every shop corner, or on the nightly news. Approximately 14,000 people died of AIDS in the U.S. in 2003. That is virtually the same number of women alone who died from Lymphoma in the U.S. for the past five years running. Yet the funding doesn't even come close for something that has no foreseeable end as opposed to a disease that is almost under control in the U.S. I'm not complacent about AIDS, it is wiping out Africa while we squander money on it in the U.S. that could be better used elsewhere. Argh it really pisses me off.

I'm all for spending on a potentially pandemic virus. If God forbid there is an epidemic that is even remotely like the Spanish flu of 1918, travel and trade would stop and the economy would be at a complete standstill. This would cost far more than what Bush is currently announcing.

I admit it. I think it is wrong to make a profit by not producing enough of a drug that could save millions of lives, and then selling the limited amount at a vastly inflated price to the very wealthy during a global epidemic. Is McCarthy gonna blacklist me now?

Also, the issue of reducing the incentive to develope new drugs is complicated for two reasons. One is that taxpayers already spend more money on basic research than the pharma industry claims to, and secondly that much of the money the industry does spend is spent on developing "me too" drugs.

I don't honestly think that we should abolish patents or anything like that, but I do think that
there is totally legitimate argument that current patent law encourages pharma companies to leave the real research to the government, and just look for ways to maximize their own profit.