I tend to froth a little when politicians and journalists offer examples of wasteful government spending that, given a moment’s reflection, isn’t all that wasteful. For example, when Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal attacked budget allocations for volcano monitoring. If there was ever something you wanted the government to monitor, I would expect a volcano to be it.

So, when one of my Facebook contacts posted the below, I broke my rule about never ever arguing on Facebook.

I won’t repost the entire conversation, but I spent long enough on it that I thought it might be worth posting it here (with some edits) for future reference:

Words like “wasteful” and “stupid” get thrown around a lot, but I don’t think we consider their meanings when we use them. It’s fine if you think this shouldn’t be a priority over something else (deficit reduction, education, lower taxes, whatever), but that doesn’t mean this study is wasteful. Here’s why I believe it isn’t.

First, an epidemic of a slow acting virus like HIV in one place will spread to another place if left unchecked. This already happened, but we were able to mostly contain the AIDS epidemic in the developed world (in part, because of massive government investment.) However, HIV evolves quickly and there’s no guarantee that our current drugs will be effective forever. We need to make sure it doesn’t spread, and research into the effectiveness of simple (and cheap) methods of prevention seems like a good idea on this front.

Second, even if this study doesn’t pan out, that doesn’t mean it was money wasted. You own a business*, and a fairly technical one, so it’s a fair bet that you buy some equipment from time to time. I’m certain you spend a few minutes or a few hours researching those purchases before you make them. In federal government terms, this study is a few hours of research.

Third, $800k is cheap. It’s 8/10 of a cent per taxpayer, and these grants aren’t just handed out like candy. Other scientists review them and decide which studies most deserve funding. I guess you could consider a small purchase wasteful, but it’s hard to consider it “stupid.”

Fourth, there’s the human cost that I mentioned before. There are 2 million infected children in the world, and 90% of them are in Africa. I believe 1/3 of the children born in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV. How many lives could be saved if this method reduced transmission rates by even 10 or 20%? Enough to warrant an $800k investment, I think.

Unless you believe that all foreign aid (or government spending) is somehow wasteful, then I find it hard to see why this would be a bad place for the government spend our money. The single caveat being that this was stimulus money, and I’m not sure how many jobs this created (though I would assume some). That hardly qualifies it for the “stupid government spending” award of the day.

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*My Facebook correspondent own a photography studio.

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A few other facts about AIDS in Africa:

‎- 5% of sub-Saharan Africans are infected with HIV. 2.7 million new cases were reported in 2007.

-20 million people have died of AIDS there since 1981.

-The cost of providing treatment for these patients (many of them women and children) is billions annually, but only half of the infected receive the treatment.