dying for basic care

this weeks "lip media picks"* has a great washington post article discussing a study from the american journal of public health showing that "over 886,000 deaths could have been prevented from 1991 to 2000 if African Americans had received the same care as whites."

"That means "five times as many lives can be saved by correcting the disparities [in care between whites and blacks] than in developing new treatments," Steven H. Woolf, lead author and director of research at Virginia Commonwealth University's Department of Family Medicine, said in a telephone interview."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13690-2004Dec20?language=printer

i wouldnt want to dismiss big pharma's whines over money for r&d out of hand, but as this article points out quite eloquently, sharpening the cutting edge is nowhere near as important as picking up the folks dragging along the bottom.

*(if youre not on the list, i recommend them - http://www.lipmagazine.org/ - they call it 'the best of the rest of the web' and they're right)