Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, once affirmed that life was suffering. Although today, living conditions are much better than in the times of Buddha, the many kinds of pain that people still endure are almost infinite.

However, the main categories are physical and mental. At first glance, the physical type seems like the most problematic, but the fact is that psychological traumas can at times be so overwhelming, that people will go as far as to commit suicide.

Pain is hard to measure, in particular when it is of a mental kind. Nevertheless, there are physical aches that are well measured and even though classified as minor pains they can significantly decrease a persons quality of life. When they persist for long periods of time, they can become very stressing and will usually drive people to desperation.

Whichever type, it is clear that nobody wants to endure any of the two. People want to be free of physical and mental pain at all moments in their life. They want to be exempt from it during childhood, during adolescence, during adulthood, and even during the later years. Pain is always unwelcome and science is the only one that has reduced the sorrow it causes.

Over the past two centuries, science and technology have achieved impressive feats on this matter and the evidence shows that they are the only ones that could one day banish it completely from our lives.

Science is steadily making progress in the fight against physical and mental anguish, with new and potent pharmaceuticals, with genetically configured drugs, and with many other treatments.

However, the time it will take to reach that painless world that is so hungered by everybody, is unknown. What is known is that the speed by which technology advances depends exclusively on the speed by which money flows into laboratories.

People tend to get impressed with nominal figures that make reference to the billions that yearly go into research and development. However, the only thing that matters is the share of the total economy that gets allocated to that area.

At present, about 3% of the U.S. economy gets allocated to research and development (R&D). Three percent is a puny amount, but the worst part is that a very large share of it goes into defense and defense related fields.

History shows that money spent on R&D, even if it is to make weapons, is better than when it gets used for civilian activities that are not of a scientific nature. Over the centuries, countless weapon technologies were adapted to many civilian activities and they delivered large benefits to society. However, history also shows that the benefits to society are much larger when the money is directly used for scientific civilian purposes.

What needs to be done is to significantly raise the share from 3% to at least 10%. There is also a need to transfer much of the military resources into civilian fields and more particularly into the medical field.

Many of the defense funds must remain in that area because the country needs to be well prepared against its enemies. However, the biggest enemy is malady. Heart disease and cancer alone kill more Americans every year than all the wars the U.S. has participated in the last century. Those two diseases also cause an inordinate amount of physical and psychological pain on their victims before terminating their lives.

In the European Union, the situation is very similar. R&D expenditures during the last decades have been at 2% of the total economy and a large share, although smaller than in the U.S., goes into defense. Since the West needs to be well prepared against its many enemies, it is not rational to make large cuts in defense. However, there is a need to make large increases in civilian R&D and more particularly in medical R&D.

The countries of the East like Japan, South Korea, and China are not either behaving rationally. Only like 2% of their economies get used for R&D.

The people of developed countries must redefine their priorities. The priority is staying alive, being free of disease, and being free of pain. At present, those countries are very far from reaching that goal and they are not taking measures to directly address that matter.

People must take things into their own hands and endorse a systemic lobbying effort so that their governments change policies and allocate more funds to scientific research. If they leave the matter to their incompetent and opportunistic politicians, it will never happen. As a result, the population will continue to suffer from an untold amount of diseases.

Pain could be soon abolished and it basically lies within our possibilities to make it happen.

Article Tags: Research And Development, Pain, U.s., European Union, Japan, China, South Korea, Medicine, Buddha, Pharmaceuticals, Defense, Military, Developed Country, Science, Disease, Malady

Source: Free Online Articles from healthyfad.com

Charles Sabillon did High School in Texas and has undergraduate degrees in Philosophy, Economics and Law as well as a masters and a doctorate in International Relations. After the PhD, he undertook post-doctoral research in the fields of History, Economics, and Ecology. He has taught Economic History at a university in Switzerland and speaks fluently English, Spanish, French and German.

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