Friday, May 16, 2008

Top 10 Worst Diseases?


The ALS Registry Act is needed to build on projects underway in three test cities and is supported even by this Administration. This act would help determine the causes of ALS, and more importantly help to find an effective treatment for this disease. We need this registry now! After ten years we still think that at any given time 30,000, in this country, are living with ALS. That is equal to the same old statistics that 5,000 will die annually. I would like to defend ALS but where do we draw the data from? How long are we going to allow our awareness efforts to be overshadowed by outdated recording methods? ALS is complicated as well as intense, 2-5 years life expectancies make it all the more important to monitor diagnoses as well as labeling the correct cause of death.
Millions of people each year have perished as a result of one of any number of seemingly unstoppable diseases. Here are but ten, in no particular order, that have wiped out mankind since the earliest recordings. The list, without ALS was found at "The List Universe.com".

1. Polio 10,000 Deaths since 1916
2. Influenza 36,000 Deaths per year
3. Spanish Flu Between 1918-19: 50-100 Million dead
4. Bubonic Plague 250 Million Europeans Dead (1/3 population)
5. Malaria 2.7 Million Deaths per year-2800 children per day
6. Ebola 160,000 Deaths since 2000
7. Cholera 12,000 Deaths since 1991
8. Smallpox Native Americans suffer a population drop from 12 Mil. to 235,000
9. AIDS 25 Million since 1981
10. The Black Death 75 million Deaths

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since Lou G was born in 1903, if you assume a very low-end 5000 G12.2 deaths per year, that would be over half a million cumulative deaths.

If we knew the right number (which is undoubtedly greater than 5000), who knows?

If we called it the Motor Neurone Plague, would that get people's attention?

ALS Grumpy said...

This Grump remains grumpy when reading these facts and figures. It is difficult to square this reality with the bizarre success Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma is having in holding 73 of his Senate colleagues in a state of impotency in blocking the ALS registry legislation.

It is easy to place the blame squarely on the one Senator who cherishes his reputation of obstructionism and negativity, but it is becoming equally hard not to place the blame firmly on the Senate Leadership who have so far remained emasculated by this single curmudgeon.

It gives one pause on how the entire legislative process which has become glacial in it progress in the past decade, can be brought it knees by the lack of leadership and collegiality.

We seem quick to criticize the new Irag government for their failure to address and resolve divisiveness.

It seems to this Grumpy one that if our elected officials truly represent us that we are not particularly effective in demanding reconciliation and productivity within our democracy.

The Iraqi's have an excuse, what is our excuse in this country where democracy has been ours to squander for over two hundred years?