Matters of life and death

I read an interesting column by Froma Harrop in the local paper tonight, and it was an eye-opener. You'd think that comparative effectiveness research, discussed in her column, would be a priority -- why pay a lot more for fancy new medical treatments that might not work as well as, much less better than, the old ones ? For that matter, why pay a lot more for a fancy new weapons system when the ones you have are capable of vaporizing much of the planet's population overnight ? Harrop compares the "medical-industrial complex" to the "military/industrial complex" that President Eisenhower warned the nation about decades ago, and I guess they're pretty similar when we get right down to it. As far as politicians are concerned, no expense is too great when it comes to saving lives or taking them.