Stars Can Influence Medical Research Funding
July 8 -- Tom Duffy's 9-year old son has spinal muscular atrophy. To raisemoney for research on the disease, Duffy sat on a Scranton, Pa., billboardfor 24 hours. "Honk if you care! Fight spinal muscular atrophy now!" Heraised $28,000 for SMA research.
AIDS has Magic Johnson and Elizabeth Taylor as celebrity fund-raisers, breast cancer has Ann Jillian and Rosie O'Donnell, paralysis has Christopher Reeve, sickle cell has"T-Boz" Watkins, juvenile diabetes has Mary Tyler Moore, multiple sclerosis has Montel Williams, and Parkinson's has Michael J. Fox.
And of course, with $1.6 billion raised for musculardystrophy, Jerry Lewis is the champion celebrity fund-raiser of them all.
But Duffy's son's disease has no celebrity. Neither does lupus, whichstrikes more people than AIDS, sickle cell anemia, muscular dystrophy,multiple sclerosis and cystic fibrosis put together.
Medical research follows the money, and the federal government has a lotto give — out of your tax dollars, of course. The National Institutes ofHealth alone will invest more than $20 billion in research this year.
The NIH is about the only federal agency to have its budget increased, andthat has a lot to do with the visibility of celebrities who advocate fornew treatments. So does the success of some foundations, particularlythose with celebrity names attached.
The Celebrity Draw
Celebrities are effective with Congress and in the media because most ofus find them so intriguing. Last May, Julia Roberts testified beforecongress on behalf of $15.5 million in funding for Rett syndrome, aserious neurological disorder affecting young children, especially girls.The disease is tragic, but it certainly helps that members of Congress get a meeting with Pretty Woman while hearing about it.
Politicians and media execs pay attention to celebrities because theythink that voters and consumers do. And for good reason. In a recent poll,more than 75 percent of Americans said that the role of the famous in medical research isjust about right.
