Are you a COPD victim?

COPD is today's third biggest killer in America, well behind heart attacks and cancer, but now ahead of strokes for the first time.  COPD is really a combination of two diseases -- chronic bronchitis and emphysema.  Each is a debilitating situation, to be sure, with twenty years of declining health and no effective treatment.

COPD diagnoses do not include asthma victims or influenza or pneumonia, although all of these are often present in COPD victims.

Some statistics intrigue me: the comparison of incidence rates versus other diseases, and versus other countries, is telling.  Also, the comparison of National Institutes of Health and other funding for research on killing and crippling diseases.

So, here goes -- the good ole USA has 37% of the world's COPD victims, the only disease in the top ten killers where America is even remotely that dominant.  COPD has grown in this country by a factor of 500% in the past sixty years, and 16% in the past twenty years.  Cancer deaths are down 17% in the same twenty years, and heart attack deaths are down 35%.

COPD receives about $116 Million for research per year, versus $3.1 Billion for AIDS research.  Yet AIDS killed 11,061 folk in 2010 and COPD killed 141,075.  Hummn, some 3500% more research per person?  Similar numbers exist for other diseases.  Asthma, debilitating to be sure, killed 3,397 folk.

What is fascinating is that there is a reasonably compelling story about causal action re emphysema, that has been "known" for forty years, yet ignored by the American Medical Association throughout.  This is perhaps one of those 'perfect storm' areas that InnovaScapes Institute might be able to help illumine.

"Only 15,000,000 Americans have COPD diagnoses today; estimates are that 35,000,000 have it."  With such huge afflictions, and NO KNOWN TREATMENT, wouldn't this seem worth looking at?