7%
Percentage of teenagers seeking contraception at public clinics who said in a survey that, if forced by law to notify their parents about receiving contraception, they would stop having sex.
20%
Percentage of same teenagers who would respond by stopping using contraception or by relying on the withdrawal method.
Jones RK et al. JAMA, 2005.
$3.6 billion
Spent by Western governments to fight HIV/AIDS in 2004
Daily Kaiser HIV/AIDS Report. 13 January 2005.
$5 billion
Spent on tsunami relief efforts by Western governments
Daily Kaiser HIV/AIDS Report. 13 January 2005.
$71-167 billion
Spent per year by the United States alone on influenza
World Health Organization, March 2003.
“We don’t mind being orphans if the aid is coming. If the aid doesn’t come, it would be better if we just died with our parents.”
Sharudin, 18, Banda Aceh, Indonesia, lost parents and four siblings in the tsunami
"That's the one that just stops my heart … I'm in my rack sleeping and there's a school bus full of explosives coming down at me and there's nowhere to go."
Robert Brown, US Marine who served in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, speaking about post-traumatic stress disorder
"It is suicidal to import cattle from Canada at this time."
Peter Lurie, deputy director of health research at Public Citizen, a controversial consumer group, regarding the recent mad cow disease outbreak
“There are some who have said that mental health is my personal agenda… But this is not my agenda. It's everyone's agenda… Individuals with mental illness are our brothers and our sisters, our mothers and our fathers. They're our sons and our daughters, our neighbors, our colleagues. And, yes, our husbands and our wives. And they all deserve better.”
Richard Codey, the new Acting Governor of New Jersey, in his State of the State address
“With half the nation’s population exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution, there is no justification for backsliding on cleanup and exposing children and their families to greater danger.”
Jim DiPeso, Republicans for Environmental Protection, criticizing the Bush Administration’s changes to the Clean Air Act
"Let us give publicity to HIV/AIDS and not hide it … And people will stop regarding it as … an illness that is there for people who are going to go to hell and not to heaven and I hope that as time goes on, we will realize that it is important for us to talk openly about people who die from AIDS."