LETTERS: FUNDING NEEDED FOR SPINAL INJURIES

To the editor:

I am writing you in regard to some recent discoveries I made on a trip to Rutgers University in New Jersey. I am the victim of a spinal-cord injury like 250,000 other Americans. About 12,000 new injuries occur every year. In the past, the notion of ever curing spinal-cord injuries or regenerating nerve tissue in the brain and spinal cord were thought to be an unattainable goal. Today, researcher are closer than ever to being able to do just that. Therapies are in place that will make this dream a reality.

The only thin lacking to make people like Christopher Reeves and others like me stand up and walk again is the funding for this research. There have been several attempts to get legislation passed to acquire this funding, but unfortunately it was tied to bills like health-care reform and the tobacco bill, which were shot down.

Currently, the estimated cost for care of SCI patients in the United States exceeds $8 billion a year. The estimated costs of caring for someone with this injury average $1.5 million over a lifetime. The only people who like this figures are wheelchair manufacturers, health-care providers and medical supply houses.

If funds were in place today to advance research, this disease would be conquered within the next five to 10 years. The cost of reaching this goal is far less than the future costs of caring for people with these injuries. What most people do not realize is that these therapies for SCI will also benefit and cure other neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis, head trauma, stroke and peripheral nerve injury. Who in his lifetime will not be affected or have someone he knows or a family member affected by one of these afflictions?

I have seen these therapies with my own eyes. I know they work. We need someone to champion legislation that will provide the funds to cure these afflictions. Who in his right mind would not spend a dollar to save $20?

Dr. Wise Young, director of the Neuroscience Center at Rutgers, is one of the pre-eminent scientists in the fields of spinal-cord injury, neurotrauma, SCI animal models and the pharmacological therapy of SCI. His studies are funded by the National Institutes of Health, but the funds are extremely lacking.

There are ways to achieve this funding through legislation that would impose no further burden on the American taxpayer. If the government is so worried about rising health-care costs and Social Security, then why doesn't it do something now to avoid expenses down the road?

Some may claim that this research is a waste of money and that there will never be a cure. The same thing was said about cancer. Now there are therapies in the pipeline that will cure cancer. All we are waiting for is the completion of trials and FDA approval. These efforts are moving forward at blinding speed. Why? Because they have the funding.

About $2.5 billion was spent on AIDS research last year. Now there is a vaccine in the works to cure this disease. There are nearly twice as many people with spinal-cord injuries as AIDS victims, so why were we only given $20 million to $40 million? The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

When it was thought that AIDS was only affecting homosexuals, a lot of Americans were not that concerned. But when it started spreading over into the heterosexual community, everyone started screaming for a cure. Fear, not compassion, was what motivated these funds.

No one ever believes or wants to think he might be the victim of a disabling injury. But if you were, wouldn't you like treatments in place that could help?

You can make a difference. We need your help. They person you may end up helping may be yourself, a friend or a loved one. The answer could be a simple one. If legislation were passed that required 50 percent of all fines collected for parking in handicapped parking places were designated for research to find a cure, I believe this would greatly advance the cause.

What better way for these funds to be spent? An enormous amount of handicapped people return to work. I would rather work than sit at home and collect disability. I do not want handouts, and most disabled people do not either.

What hinders most disabled from returning to the work place is discrimination. Although we have the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 to protect our rights, much of the time it is of little help.

If the government calculated the dollar figure that is saves on disability benefits and Medicare by people like myself who work and applied it toward research, it would save billions of dollars in the future and allow others to return to the workplace.

As Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said, "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide for those who have too little." I was recently in Washington, D.C., and read this on a monument dedicated to him. In fact, I read many good quotes on various monuments that really made me wonder: Are these truths we actually live by, or just nice quotes to be etched in stone?

If FDR were alive today, I am sure he would have rather seen the enormous amount of money spent on that monument put toward research than spent on him. We can spend $200 million to take pictures of rocks on Mars, but only one-tenth of that to better the lives of 250,000 Americans.

Please do not sit idly by and let the suffering continue any longer than it already has. The time for action is now. Let's do something to cure this affliction. Thank you for your consideration.

JOSEPH D. LANDEWEE

Liberty, Mo.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Joseph Landewee is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Irvin Landewee of Cape Girardeau. Joseph was injured in an automobile accident. He is seeking ways to find more funding for spinal-cord injury research while working at the Ford Motor Co. plant in Claycomo, Mo. For further information on this research, contact the Spinal Cord Project, Neuroscience Center, Rutgers University, 604 Allison Road, D413, Piscataway, N.J. 08854-8082. The telephone number is (732) 445-6573.