One Big Quote

This is a big quote from a NY Times op-ed piece.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death, just behind heart disease. Together, they kill more than a million people in this country, followed by respiratory diseases, accidents and strokes. Then comes Alzheimer’s, which kills 84,000 Americans a year. And yet, total federal research money on Alzheimer’s through the National Institutes of Health was $562 million last year.

To put that in perspective, we spent almost 20 times that amount — somewhere around $10 billion — on the National Security Agency, the electronic snoops who monitor everyday phone records. For the rough equivalent of funding a breakthrough in Alzheimer’s, the government has not prevented a single terrorist attack, according to a 2014 report on the telephone-gathering colossus at the N.S.A.   …

You can blame the media, particularly cable news, for misplaced fear and budgets. CNN is the worst. Politicians do whatever they can to get cable time, and complaining about the paltry amount of money given to Parkinson’s disease ($139 million a year) will not get you in the “Situation Room.”

– “What to Be Afraid Of,” by Timothy Egan