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Téléthon

Monday 10 December 2007 by legendary_totoro

The Téléthon is a campaign for collecting funds in order to help research on certain diseases which are currently uncurable...

Every year the comitee decides to which illness researches the raised funds will go and there are incentives like you can deduct 2/3 of your donation from your yearly taxes.

The event is help by a public TV channel and people working for it (recieve your promises of grants, answering the phone, etc...) do it for free (artists that come by and sign in the TV show included). It’s really a charity, caritative and non-lucrative operation and I’m not going to rant about what they do and how they do it.

My point is more about the context of the operation. Pharmaceutics make gazillions of $ in profits and I really think it’s a shame to resort to asking people for money to convey researches on certain illnesses. Basically, if an illness doesn’t generate enough profits from people buying the cure, laboratories aren’t going to invest a single penny in the research...

They just consider it’s not worth investing money in said research because if a cure is found (and that’s not a given) there won’t be enough people afflicted by the illness to buy the cure. That’s very capitalist point of view and in my opinion a very disgusting one.

I claim that science has a duty to make everyone benefit from its progress. In my mind a scientist, you don’t take on a research subject as an investment in time which could make you a millionnaire... But in today’s world, or at least in French laboratories (and I know there are a lot of other countries where the following applies), you don’t get subventionned for the pleasure and the art of researching something that the lab can’t benefit from...

Money and profits are dominant "values" in today’s world. They create a gap between people and the gap enlarges, never to get closed if you’d ask me. When will greater good become a more rationnal and less self centered motive among the people who rule the world ? I may be pessimistic here but it seems the answere is never...

Back on a local analysis, French people suffer from the inflation which is showing to be a result of several complex interactions between the high price of an oil barrel, inflation and universalization. And yet, they are asked to contribute for, I’ll say it again, a noble cause and everyone seems to think it’s quite normal, aside from me...

I say stop it. I don’t believe an average worker has any share of his income to spend in charity : he’s barely making a living out of his hard work. This is quite a paradox because donations mainly come from modest revenues. I don’t understand why people who can really make a difference won’t even budge. I don’t understand why French government doesn’t even have an affiliated department dealing with this kind of thing.

Basically, the whole process is rigged : the poor gets poorer, French government saves millions in sponsoring, and everyone feels good...

Once again I commend people who are paying with themselves in the organisation and people who are donating even if they shouldn’t do it considering their low income. I just hope the gazillions that were collected will make a difference for all the people who need them...


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