U.S. deaths in Iraq, war on terror surpass 9/11 toll

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(triphop @ Sep 6 2006, 10:15 AM) [snapback]315124[/snapback]</div>

i keep needing to prove stuff to you - why? do you ever read history books? or are they biased too. the only proof you need is that he was a one term president to sumarily got his butt kicked into histories trash bin. he keeps opening his trap reminding us of the problems that arise from a lack of genetic variations - he tries to make up for his failings as president which you can read about. see where historians rank carter and then see where they rank reagan. then ask them for proof why carter is ranked sooo low and getting lower and lower. what did he accomplish during his term - i cant remember anything significant - can you?

i will stay away from the personal attacks that you resort to

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Sep 6 2006, 10:30 AM) [snapback]315131[/snapback]</div>

Because you keep making up stuff. If you had the courage of your convictions you should not be afraid to provide some kind of references. What "history books" are you referring to in this case?

Oh, so you can't remember so it must be true. :lol: Can you say something which is more stupid and ignorant? That would be challenge, even to you.

Please provide references to the Historians who compare Reagan & Carter please? I would like to read them. For your information, generally historians don't "Rank" historical figures as it removes context.

What does this mean? Are you trying to make a joke or what?

Attack away, Liar.

 

CHILDREN! ENOUGH!

If you can't debate this without ad hominem attacks, then take it offline.

Yeah, if I don't like it, I don't have to read it, blah blah blah. This has disintegrated into a pissin' contest, so go do it in your own yard.

Please, act like decent adults, lest others begin to believe you're not.

Don't get into "he started it", either - just quit. If you refuse to quit, take it elsewhere.

Moderators, isn't there some rule against this kind of name-calling?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(glenhead @ Sep 6 2006, 10:51 AM) [snapback]315146[/snapback]</div>

Sorry pop

 

Well, my compliments to both opponents for an interesting, though vituperative, debate. I enjoyed the banter and I think that it was a good demonstration of the frustration that a lot of folks feel these days and the serious divide that exists I take some solace that debates like this can take place. Fortunately, they occur in a venue that does not support physical conflict... :huh:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Sep 6 2006, 07:31 AM) [snapback]315079[/snapback]</div>

WOW what a statment!! That was Great, dbermanmd has been right on target (Im not sucking up here) but man he has stated everything that has been said during the past presidentcy that was correct.. who needs proof? It has all been said before but blown off because its been said by the looney right wingers. You wont hear the extreme left agree with any of these quotes with out proof from a liberal site...
I see it brought out the extreme left wearing the rose colored glasses crew with a vengance :lol:
What rule was that? the name calling thing??? I forget what # that was.... And the best part is he hasn't had to call anyone names to get his point accross!

mitchbf:
Well, my compliments to both opponents for an interesting, though vituperative, debate. I enjoyed the banter and I think that it was a good demonstration of the frustration that a lot of folks feel these days and the serious divide that exists I take some solace that debates like this can take place. Fortunately, they occur in a venue that does not support physical conflict...

mitchbf~
Well said sir.

I would like to point out who was getting violently upset during the thread...

 

in 2005 the american cancer society (cancer.org) estimated that 40,000 women would die from breast cancer that year.

where's the cancer research funding going? iraq...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(galaxee @ Sep 6 2006, 07:30 PM) [snapback]315466[/snapback]</div>

Certainly not to Iraq, nor is the funding for aids, its being spent but its a slow process.. I wonder if some of it is going into someones pocket? :mellow:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(galaxee @ Sep 6 2006, 06:30 PM) [snapback]315466[/snapback]</div>

Not to be argumentative (well, maybe a bit, but only to be fair (and defend my wife's work)), but the Department of Defense itself spends several hundred million dollars every year on cancer and other health research. My wife spent five years working at the Veterans Hospital near Loma Linda University, managing the budget for the leading osteoporosis researcher in the world - whose work is fully funded by the Department of Defense. A couple of snips from budgetary publications:

"The FY 2003 Department of Defense total of $459 million for medical research includes $150 million for breast cancer research and $85 million for prostate cancer research in peer-reviewed, competitively awarded grants. The FY 2003 budget also contains $10 million for ovarian cancer research, $50 million for peer-reviewed research on other medical topics, and miscellaneous amounts for other medical research topics."
American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS Report XXVIII: Research and Development Fiscal Year 2004, Chapter 6, "R&D in the FY 2004 Department of Defense Budget"

The above funds are just for the Department of Defense, and do not include the other hundreds of millions of dollars from various grants (the main headache for my wife - keeping it all straight). Military researchers dedicate a huge amount of effort to combatting health problems that afflict everyone. The DOD numbers are not included in the appropriations request described below, which are just for the U.S. Government's National Cancer Institute:

"BUDGET STATEMENT

The fiscal year (FY) 2004 budget includes $4,770 million, an increase of $183 million over the FY 2003 enacted level of $4,587 million comparable for transfers proposed in the President's request."
National Cancer Institute, Fiscal Year 2004 Budget Request

Sorry, but I don't consider nearly $5 billion to be chump change.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(priusguy04 @ Sep 6 2006, 07:50 PM) [snapback]315489[/snapback]</div>

uhhhh...

you are aware of the massive funding cuts at the national institutes of health and other scientific funding agencies to free up more money for armed forces, correct?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(glenhead @ Sep 6 2006, 08:09 PM) [snapback]315501[/snapback]</div>

fair enough. i know a couple fellow grads who are supported by DoD grants... though their funding competitiveness is at an all-time high, and the cancer lab in which they work has lost major amounts of funding in the past few months due to budget cuts.

i don't see where there was any offense to what your wife does, as i swim with the sharks of science myself (though not in the cancer realm) and know how incredibly valuable a grants and contracts administrator is.

regarding the 2006 FY budget, commentary in Science:

"Basic and applied research spending across all federal agencies will inch up by $1 billion in 2006, to $57 billion, according to an analysis* by AAAS (which publishes Science). But the lion's share of the increase went to preparation for NASA's moon-Mars mission, a bump that helped NASA achieve an overall 1.5% increase, to $16.5 billion. Even a 2.1% increase in the Defense Department's $73 billion research and development budget masks a 2.9% drop in its $1.5 billion basic research account and a flat budget for the $3 billion Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)."

"The gloomy 2006 budget news casts a pall over expectations about what President George W. Bush will request next month for the 2007 fiscal year (FY), which begins 1 October. NIH and NSF officials have been told to expect little or no increases, with another cut likely in NSF's education programs and no money for any major new scientific facilities."

"This year's cut in NIH's budget, by $35 million to $28.6 billion, means that the agency is falling behind inflation. That will result in fewer new grants and a continued decline in success rates."
[italics and bold mine]

and for 2007, also quoted from Science:

"2007 is shaping up to be another year of slim pickings for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Last week, a Senate spending panel approved a modest 0.8% increase, to $28.6 billion, for the fiscal year starting 1 October. The committee also asks the NIH director to fund a long-term, multibillion-dollar children's health study, a project NIH had said it can no longer afford."

"Department of Labor/Health and Human Services Subcommittee Chair Arlen Specter (R-PA) noted that NIH's budget has fallen behind the rate of inflation by $3.7 billion since 2005, adding that the 2007 funding level represents a "disintegration of the appropriate federal role in health and education programs," FASEB reports." [bold mine]

while the numbers aren't "chump change" by any means, biotech isn't exactly what anyone would call cheap. cuts in the budget, knocking funding levels down below previous years even before adjustments for inflation, is not a sustainable environment for discovery or development of any kind of prevention or cure for anything. the rearrangements in funding aren't coincidental IMO.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(glenhead @ Sep 6 2006, 08:09 PM) [snapback]315501[/snapback]</div>

Galaxee~

I myself would lean more towards glenhead's reply, than my own.. His has the facts and figures *Proof* But thats not being spent in Iraq...... :huh:

 

a few numbers for one year do not disprove a decreasing trend over multiple years. see my reply above, for the budgets in 2006 and 2007. that says the budgets are decreasing, by the numbers.

now that the money is going directly to iraq isn't exactly a statement that can be proven, since the government has so many other places to spend its money. but considering what a drain of financial resources this whole venture is turning out to be, it'd be no surprise that other budgets are being cut to the bone to free up funding due to what's being spent in iraq.

if your rent goes up $100 a month and your income does not change, you're going to trim down your other expenditures to make room for that extra expense. maybe the money's not going directly to the additional rent, however everything is tighter all over because the rent went up.

 

Dang, I hate it when people come up with newer numbers... You raise some good points (more things to think about - yay!), and I want to toss out a couple of leanings? thoughts? wonderings?

Just to clarify one point - I didn't consider my wife to be under attack, or being disparaged. "Defend" was a poor choice of words. Don't know what other word I might have used. Hmmm...

Anyway, Galaxee, the expenditures outside the Department of Defense come (obviously) from a different bucket. I looked all this up a couple of weeks ago, and can't remember the whole thing, but most of it is (I think) in the category of discretionary spending. The research I did was in investigating the trend of deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product (a topic for another thread, please), and the report was for this year from the Government Accounting Office - pretty current stuff. Yes, the defense budget is way up, but discretionary spending is WAY up. The prescription drug program in Medicare was a whopping big number, as were several of the other traditionally-Democratic programs that have been usurped by the Bush administration. (Let's be honest now - how much of the angst on the left-leaning side is from having the things they've been hollering for being instituted by a Republican administration? I wonder, but I digress...) The cuts in medical research have been way overshadowed by humongous increases elsewhere. What I'd really like to see is how much the researchers' budgets have actually been impacted by these monetary shifts - how much of the slack is picked up by other grants and funding sources? Historically, lots of kinds of federal funding for medical research has been paid for by shifts from other budgets through grants as a fiscal year progresses, so I wonder how much of this has gone on behind the numbers you've found for us. Has research really been harmed or slowed? My basic problem is that I don't trust any politician, no matter the party or slant, and don't believe a single word that comes out of any of their mouths without lots of personal research to dig out the truth. If a politician says it's raining outside, I'll check my wallet to be sure he hasn't stolen it, walk out the door, and see if I get wet.

One of the things all of us can do personally is contribute directly to the agencies that research things. My little sister has multiple sclerosis, so we give to the National MS Society. I've given to the American Cancer Society and American Heart Association in the past, and to several other research-oriented groups through the years as cashflow permits. I don't give to the United Way, because I give directly to the organizations I want my money to go to without any dilution. This is something we can *all* do, no matter how small the amount, to help fund research, no matter what the lying, thieving politicians want to do with our tax dollars. (Proselytizing mode off.)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(glenhead @ Sep 6 2006, 09:22 PM) [snapback]315526[/snapback]</div>

well, you definitely raise some good points about other discretionary spending increases which deserve attention. overall i'm going to stick to my guns though, and say that if we weren't spending all that money in iraq we'd have more money to go around altogether. however, i'm sure that the govt being the govt, the money would go elsewhere anyway...

what i CAN answer to is the questions about research funding, laboratory budgets, and adjustments of funding because that's something i hear about frequently (sometimes ad nauseum...)

our lab is funded by a number of grants, with funding sources correlating with the distinct research ventures we are involved in. each grant requires progress reports, etc, to keep funding coming in and to prove that the funding is going toward the proposal that was submitted. it's hard to take money from Grant A and apply it to Project B without impeding what could be on the progress report for Grant A and pissing off the reviewers for that grant, giving yourself a poor performance record. my boss is seeking grants from private agencies, but unfortunately it's very uncommon to actually have a project directly in line with their interests (in this case, a certain aspect of parkinson's disease) and pretty hard to get funded that way. of course, a main job of the principal investigator is to sit on their tail all day and think up projects and write up grants to acquire funding to keep the lab going... but all that effort is funded at 10% of apps or less, last i heard.

a number of labs in our department (and not to be boastful but we are a strong department with very prominent researchers) have had to cut back on spending by firing technicians, not taking in any students other than the ones they currently are funding, closing down projects, etc. some have ground to a halt altogether because of repeated triaged grant renewals. and of course there are many, many intermediate situations.

overall i think there is harm to progress in many areas, including cancer research. i'm sure my avatar gives me away as someone with a personal vested interest in breast cancer in particular, but i think diverting funding from all these programs to kill people in other countries, with a net result being that more people are dying here as well due to lack of attention to medical progress... well that's a shame.

i agree this is something everyone can do to help that won't be affected by lobbyists, politicians, and greed. (is it just me or did that last bit sound very redundant? :lol i will be happy to donate to such causes when we've got the money to do so. and i think that's the problem for many. if you've got someone with MS in the family (i do too, btw) clearly if you want to help the MS society is a way to do that.

ok this is getting long :blink:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(galaxee @ Sep 6 2006, 09:05 PM) [snapback]315542[/snapback]</div>

Ok - thanks for the *current* view from the front lines (as opposed to one from a 2004 fiscal report). You've given me things to think about.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Alric @ Sep 6 2006, 09:36 PM) [snapback]315529[/snapback]</div>

Now the topic has veered

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Alric @ Sep 5 2006, 01:21 PM) [snapback]314719[/snapback]</div>

So then what is your solution?

Wildkow

p.s. Complaining is easy.