theducks: (Default)
theducks ([personal profile] theducks) wrote2008-04-08 07:15 am

(no subject)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/08/2210455.htm?section=wa?section=wa :

A health economist has calculated that the government should be willing to spend $15 billion a year to bridge the gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Curtin University's Gavin Mooney has estimated the government should spend $340 billion over 22 years, based on the government's spending elsewhere in the health service.[...] He has calculated that the government spends $40,000 per person subsidising a drug that increases life expectancy by one year.


You know, I think if you just paid matching salary to each of Australia's 400,000 Aboriginals of up to $40,000 per year, you'd actually do a lot better job of increasing life expectancy than medicating them. Money for nothing is a recipe for trouble, but doubling income gained from other sources could produce some exciting results, especially if some of that money went into local community trust funds for housing and the like.

[identity profile] infamyanonymous.livejournal.com 2008-04-08 03:27 am (UTC)(link)
There's a drug that increases life expectancy by a year? Those wacky doctors!

[identity profile] evil-megz.livejournal.com 2008-04-08 07:08 am (UTC)(link)
I think that should be taken more statistically (though I have no idea what it is) but think if a drug increases life expectancy of 1 in 10 people by 10 years (say by curing/delaying a disease that 1 in 10 people get) then it increases everybody's life expectancy by one year, statistically (Or in this case, Aboriginal life expectancy).

Also one more year isn't much... penicillin/antibiotics would increase life expectancy much more than that (I assume)

[identity profile] nephron.livejournal.com 2008-04-08 07:24 am (UTC)(link)
It's probably a medicine in a very specialised group, which has a mean increase in life expectancy of about a year.

[identity profile] greyreviews.livejournal.com 2008-04-08 09:58 am (UTC)(link)
Flouride, Iodine, Folate.

It is however, a bullshit idea and statement from top to bottom. Instead of adding drugs to the aboriginals, we should be removing them.

Of course in 30 years we can then look forward to the next lot of claims of aboriginals complaining about the ones they love being taken from them. Vic, Fosters and little EB.

So for a radical plan that would actually do something to fix aboriginal disadvantage: An outright ban on all sales of alcohol, cigarettes and solvents to anyone who looks like they have too much of a tan.

Ridiculous isnt it? After all people have the right to destroy themselves.

[identity profile] infamyanonymous.livejournal.com 2008-04-08 10:53 am (UTC)(link)
Jeebus, why does no-one understand me on the internet lately?

I... I just don't know how to rephrase that to make it clearer. Like in computer games, when you get an extra guy; you take a tablet and *ding* you get another year of life.

[identity profile] evil-megz.livejournal.com 2008-04-08 11:11 am (UTC)(link)
I think I understand you...

Did you mean as if it were a drug that didn't actually DO anything (ie didn't target a specific illness or whatever) other than... give people another year... and maybe if you take it twice... DING DING ?

[identity profile] infamyanonymous.livejournal.com 2008-04-08 11:15 am (UTC)(link)
Yep, that's it. Just a drug that makes your body live another year. Woo!

[identity profile] greyreviews.livejournal.com 2008-04-08 12:42 pm (UTC)(link)
When i said bullshit idea and statement i meant the govt, not you. Sorry for confusion, i see how i could be taken the other way.

I got that you were talking about the hilarity of a magic pill giving you an extra year.

[identity profile] theducks.livejournal.com 2008-04-08 12:49 pm (UTC)(link)
I kinda of got that from the linked article too