Money wasted on medical research

Lately, I've been told everything I do is going to kill me. I can't smoke, drink, eat meat or play with loaded handguns. Even sex can kill me, or so I'm told. Everything seems to cause cancer. And as if that's not enough, if the Catholic church is right, I'm about to go blind.\nWhat is wrong with scientists? Why do they use their great big brains to find out what's killing us? Think of what those minds could do, say, in the area of penis enlargement. Well, maybe that's a bad idea. I'd hate to come to campus and see a law students' 10-footer stomping around.\nLet me point out something that should be obvious. It's a little depressing, but then so is being an opinion columnist. The world is designed to kill you. It has killed everybody so far, hasn't it? If you look close enough at anything, you're bound to find substances that will kill you. Trying to avoid death is like trying to avoid failed-writers-turned-professors in the English department -- it can't be done.\nAm I wrong in saying that science should concentrate on improving the quality of people's lives rather than their longevity? Most of us have lost friends and family to a disease. I myself am among that group. But I wonder how much good we are really doing with cancer research. If medical history teaches us anything, it is that once we cure one disease, a worse one comes along. We are set up to be killed.\nThis might be hard to swallow, but it's true. Most disease-curing research focuses on afflictions that strike the wealthy and insured. The research, and the often useless or harmful treatments, drive the price of insurance up. If the research were limited, and that money used instead to build facilities with a comfortable dying atmosphere, the price of health insurance would drop. \nGovernment money could be spent on improving the quality of life in schools and poor neighborhoods. And don't forget that this means the already-insured would have more money in their pockets.\nOf course doctors' salaries would suffer, but that's tough luck for them. How long ago was it that they were circumcising females to "cure" masturbation and cutting veins to "bleed out" sickness? \nNo facet of American society has made less progress in the last 100 years than medicine. People do live longer, but that's because we have more food and better working conditions, not better doctors. Doctors remain baffled by cancer, AIDS and even the common cold. What type of return have we gotten for our investment? If I put my money into a business and got nothing better from it than the equivalent of chemotherapy and cherry throat lozenges, I'd put my cash elsewhere.\nBeing a doctor is considered an admirable profession because of the education and hours required. I'm sure that being a good surgeon is worthy of the praise it gets, but I'm curious as to how all of that education helps the family doctor or research scientist. I could learn to prescribe antibiotics and check prostates with nothing more than a weekend seminar and a Chinese finger trap.\nAre we so disillusioned as a society we think money can cure all things? Throwing money at death is like throwing money at an ugly stripper -- it'll just smile and keep on coming after you. Too much money is wasted on medical science. The extra few years of life this might gain is not worth what it is taking from the many.