I’m going to focus on this, because it seems to be the single biggest issue here that people disagree with, and it’s the key one in the position from the article.
Yes. I think pretty much exactly that. I reckon that if I sponsor someone for a hundred dollars at the start of November, I am likely to donate less to other causes for a significant period afterwards. I honestly cannot think how you can argue otherwise. Do you feel that people have an unlimited budget for charity? For you to claim that this belief has no relation to the real world strikes me as an absolute reversal of fact.
And I don’t think that applies only to charitable donations. I think it also applies to government funding and other backers of scientific research. Again, I would love to know how you can argue otherwise.
So once again, and with feeling. I think the argument that we should focus research money on the diseases that cause the most damage is entirely reasonable. I do not think that should be to the exclusion of all research in other causes, and I think you could spend a huge amount of time discussing the best way to identify which diseases should be a priority, but I see nothing unreasonable at all with the position.
It is not what I’m suggesting. Focussing resources in proportion to the impact of the disease does not mean excluding all other diseases outwith a particular league table position.
but research on the diseases that cause e most damage is already under way. Or is your position that there is a major disease which gets no funding that should.
Anyway it seems your position is kinda silly, like saying the sky should be blue. Yes, the sky already is blue.
In order to believe this, you have to imagine that you are drawing from a pool of earmarked “charity money.”
This does not resemble the real-world dynamics of charitable giving in the slightest. While it is possible that some people might consult a ledger and say, “Let’s see, I’ve budgeted $700 for charitable donations this year, and this is October 1st so the YTD is $525. Actual expenditure however is only $499, though, so I’ll donate $85 today to bring my charity budget back in line.” However, the number of people who approach giving to charity this way are likely to be so rare as to be statistically insignificant.
How it works in the real world is that with each appeal, people make an on-the-fly assessment of how much of their disposable income they’re willing to part with at that moment, for that particular cause. It is nonsense to imagine that giving to one fundraising effort in November “takes away” from another in October - that if not for the $40 I pledged to Movember last year, that another charity might expect more from me. In reality, these sorts of expenses come from your disposable income. If I didn’t sponsor a mustache, that $40 may have been diffused any other number of ways, and even if that exact same $40 remained in my wallet, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to now feel like I can now afford to donate $80 to someone else.
Again, this can only seem sensible if you abstract and simplify things until they no longer have any meaningful relationship to reality, because there is a lot more required to conduct research than simply money, there is not a single actor addressing problems, because funding is allocated according to where funds are needed, rather than determining the overall urgency of a problem.
Once we have a pool of funds available, we don’t just spend it and make things happen. You need to have people doing research to apply for disbursements. Millions of people work in parallel on problems that are interesting or important to them, and ultimately, they determine how much money is spent on a problem - there is no top-down intelligence mandating who’s researching what - they’re looking at piles of grant requests and trying to make decisions based on what makes the most sense.
If you think that pancreatic cancer is more pressing than breast cancer, don’t think that withholding funds from breast cancer research in October is going to make a difference. Dig deep in April when the Cancer Society calls - but don’t run around telling people that they shouldn’t contribute for breast cancer research because breast cancer is no big deal and women are all needy, self-absorbed bitches anyway. Breast cancer research is not taking resources away from pancreatic cancer research.
Let’s just spend a little bit of time discussing which diseases should be a priority. Which type of cancer has the highest incidence rate in the US? Prostate cancer. And which type of cancer receives the* least *funding per incidence? Oh, prostate cancer.
Clearly, work needs to be done, and funds are needed. One really easy way to get a sense of which diseases are a priority is by the appearance of fundraising campaigns. These are started and gain traction because there are enough people who feel strongly that there is a palpable need for funds, and they come by these feelings honestly. Don’t waste your time thinking “Geez, before I cough up $10 for the cause, maybe I’d better check to see if colon cancer is a bigger problem.” When there’s a budget shortfall for colon cancer research, you’ll hear about it - fundraising is wonderfully self-regulating that way. If you think there there is currently not enough being done to address it, get involved. Start a campaign.
And yet (in terms of what the hoi polloi can contribute.) that is exactly what young Manley is suggesting.
This is a false dichotomy, in that people do not have to choose a single cause to support. It is absurd because it minimizes a form of cancer that has a tremendous impact on a huge number of people. (And is, in fact, so very similar in impact to “women’s cancers” that it does not begin to make sense to distinguish between their relative impacts when talking (foolishly) about them in the context of the general class of “problems we might otherwise address.”
The whole idea of “Don’t put any energy into X, because (a vague, unspecified) Y is more important” is imbecilic. There is an infinite and multidimensional scale of relative importance - this sort of thinking would lead to a paralyzing Zeno’s paradox of philanthropy in which one could never drop a quarter in the Poppy Fund jar because of the incomprehensible number of more important things you contribute toward.
Wrong. In order to believe this, I have to imagine that money is a finite resource, and that people have finite amounts to spend on anything. For good measure, I can throw in the concept that people give to charity a subset of that money, which will probably be governed by their other spending commitments.
So now, I can imagine that people have a reasonably limited amount to donate to charities in any given period, and a donation to one charity will inevitably account for part of that.
Yes, manifestly. In reality, people who are donating to charities generally have a cash injection every two weeks, a percentage of which will go to budgeted expenses, some to savings (hopefully) and the rest is disposable income. The average portion of that disposable income which goes to charity is ~2%. Because the distribution of appeals for charity is diffuse, and charity typically represents such a small portion of disposable income, donating to one campaign is not to the detriment of others. I’m not going to snub an appeal from Movember because I gave %0.07 of my take-home pay to the Pink Ribbon campaign on my last paycheque. This amount is so trivial compared with everything else that comes out of your disposable income that it cannot be said to have a significant effect on what is available for other charitable appeals.
Do you feel that research for prostate cancer has received an inappropriate amount of funding in relation to other cancers with higher mortality rates? Or do you feel is gotten about what is should have? Maybe a thrid option?
Not trying to combative, just trying to understand.
You (and Manley) are taking the position that annual deaths are the only way to measure the relative worthiness of donations for various diseases. I am taking the position that a disease’s cost to society can be measured in other ways, including direct cost (e.g., treatment), pain and suffering caused, and deterioration of quality of life. How many deaths from breast cancer can be directly traced back to a woman’s decision that she’d rather face a chance of death than have a breast removed? Death is not the only factor.
Another problem with the concept of doing research only on a small number of carefully-chosen diseases is that cures/remedies can be serendipitous. Research into one type of cancer could provide a cure for a related cancer.
Donations of this type are intensely personal. Few people make cold, rational decisions about this kind of thing. I hosted a prostate cancer fundraiser earlier this year. Why? Because I had it, and my cousin died of it. I wanted to help prevent other men from having to go through that experience. Manley has no right to tell other people what charitable causes they should put their time and disposable income into. And dismissing sick and dying people because they’re “privileged” is an assholish thing to do.
Another problem with the concept of doing research only on a small number of carefully-chosen diseases is that cures/remedies can be serendipitous. Research into one type of cancer could provide a cure for a related cancer.
Donations of this type are intensely personal. Few people make cold, rational decisions about this kind of thing. I hosted a prostate cancer fundraiser earlier this year. Why? Because I had it, and my cousin died of it. I wanted to help prevent other men from having to go through that experience. Manley has no right to tell other people what charitable causes they should put their time and disposable income into. And dismissing sick and dying people because they’re “privileged” is an assholish thing to do.
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It could, but generally direct research is more likely to yield results - you could say that about any medical research at all after all, no matter how esoteric.
And while donations are personal, that doesnt meant theres no place for rationality - many donations come from foundations for a start where information about the issue is important. This debate also involves people actively arguing that prostate cancer is underfunded compared to breast cancer for instance, you only need to look at the wiki entries on each:
“People with prostate cancer generally encounter significant disparities in awareness, funding, media coverage, and research—and therefore, inferior treatment and poorer outcomes—compared to other cancers of equal prevalence.”
When claims like that are made, its valid to contest the issue.
Valid point, Otara. But I don’t think adequacy of funding is really the issue. The issue is someone saying, “hey, you shouldn’t fund prostate cancer research because breast cancer research is more important.” We could debate relative importance forever (although, this being the Pit, I’d rather just call Alex Manley a dickhead and move on), but I think people have the right to donate to any cause they wish – and most people will pick a cause they have a personal connection to.
Well I think he’s more saying ‘ignore these people who are making this into a poor us contest’ and support it in context to everything else. He does open with this:
“As far as I can tell though, the whole thing is just a really well-disguised tantrum that guys are content to throw to make it seem like prostate cancer research is as important as research towards curing women’s cancers, or, say, getting food and clean water to starving people.”
His critique in my view is aimed the people in it who make it a contest, like the quote I gave above. But perhaps falls into the same trap he’s critiquing unfortunately.
Sure we do tend to support things we’re personally connected to, but from a first world perspective I think its fair to challenge that, albeit in a way that doesnt end up having people reacting with ‘screw you’.
I think his error is more that he doesnt explain his position well enough, than that there isnt a point to what he’s saying. A few opening quotes like the one I gave would probably have changed the picture a fair bit in my view. And perhaps not saying ‘the whole thing’ which is bound to attack the people who arent supporting it in the way he’s critiquing.
Saying people who have one disease have worse outcomes or less attention than people with another doesn’t make it a contest. The comment may or may not be accurate, and that can be evaluated factually. On the other hand the author seems to be saying flat-out that prostate cancer is less important than malaria or cancers that affect women, and that sounds a lot more like making it into a contest to me.
Saying that you’re being discriminated against does not inherently make it a contest. Alex Manley’s column is an example of what making it into a contest looks like.
