The investment in the health of a nation should not lose out to the prosecution of foreign wars. Yet that seems to be what has been happening in the US under the Bush Administration.

This article at Huffington Post traces the investment in scientific research over the past number of years and explains its impact on the health and longevity of Americans.

Today, Americans will live on average 30 years longer than they did a century ago. This is due to the triumph of public health interventions such as sanitation, improvements in hygiene and nutrition, clean water supplies, measures to reduce infant and maternal mortality, safety regulations, and advances from scientific research including vaccinations, antibiotics, and new technology to effectively diagnose, treat and prevent diseases.

But that investment has been diminished under the Bush Administration with attendant threats:

Alarmingly, the effects of significant decreases in funding for biomedical research are coming at a time of escalating threats to human health. The prevalence of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes is increasing at an alarming rate, and over 32 new deadly infectious diseases including AIDS, now a global pandemic, have emerged worldwide since the 1970s.

This article does a very good job, not only of explaining the current the health research environment but also in explaining the commitments of the current presidential contenders to health science.