Fill in the blanks

I found the following quote to be very interesting, showing the problems we have when mixing science with politics.

The United Nations' top __________ scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the __________, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement.

__________ remains a devastating __________ crisis. But the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding __________.

Having millions fewer people with __________ is good news. Some researchers, however, contend that persistent overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the spread __________. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated the extent of the __________ to help gather political and financial support for combating __________.

"There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda," said Helen Epstein, author of "__________" "I hope these new numbers will help refocus the response in a more pragmatic way."

If you want to know what the UN has been over inflating, here is the link to the story.

However, given that we have already seen alarmist science produced for the sake of fundraising, how likely is it that we might see this news repeated in 20 years?

Far more people die from malaria than HIV/AIDs. You are far more likely to die from lung cancer (the number one cause of cancer death in both sexes) than breast or prostate cancer. Yet, HIV/AIDS and Breast cancer receive far more funding than malaria and lung cancer.

It can’t be an issue of racism or poverty, both malaria and HIV/AIDS are most strongly felt in sub-Saharan Africa. So why does HIV/AIDS research receive greater funding? Because they used alarmist data to inflate the urgency of the research. Yet, since far more people die from malaria, isn’t it reasonable to conclude that the alarmism drawing attention away from the more deadlier of the problems is in fact doing more harm than good?

I'm not saying that we shouldn't fund research on HIV/AIDs, but that using the political tools of fear and alarmism to sway public opinion does not necessarily point us in the correct direction.