Money for Heart Trouble

One of the oldest complaints against medical research is the uneven way the money is divided. Some diseases that kill relatively few people (e.g., polio) have been using up far more research money per case than such common ailments as heart disease and cancer.

Recently efforts have been made to even things up. Last summer General Motors' Alfred P. Sloan Jr., gave $4,000,000 for cancer research (see below), and last month the American Cancer Society allotted $500,000 to research, from this year's fundraising. Last week's news: heart disease will get $578,000 a year for six years from those practical operators, the insurance companies. This is two and a half times as much money as is now being spent on heart-disease research.

The 143 insurance companies which contribute to the Life Insurance Medical Research Fund handle 90% of U.S. and Canadian life insurance. They figure that the research may save them money in the long run: they have to pay off to the families of many of the 400,000 citizens who die every year of heart disease. When the six years are up, life-insurance research may be diverted to some other common disease which is proving expensive to the underwriters.

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