Today, a report by The BBC highlighted a massive difference in the spending on cancer research and the spending on dementia research - for every pound spent on dementia, twelve pounds are spent on researching cancer.
Fair enough, some might think, as cancer is widespread - yes, it is, but so is dementia and interestingly, every dementia patient costs the economy five times more than a cancer patient, and eight times more than a patient with heart disease.
So why the difference in government spending in research? It has been suggested that dementia care falls more with the relatives than cancer care (cancer is medical care, therefore covered by the NHS, dementia is social care and in most cases is not NHS funded), so there is more pressure to fund research into cancer - the charity and heart charities are also larger.
But there is also the issue of public perception - as the report suggests, most people have personal experience of someone they know suffering from cancer of heart disease, and as both diseases can also affect younger people, they somehow seem more relevant. Alzheimer's is usually hidden away in care homes.
I am not suggesting that there should or ever would be a real choice to make between funding cancer or Alzheimer's - but both are growing and both are costly to the economy - surely research on both should be fully funded as a matter of urgency?
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