Medicine: Deadly Lag

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Neglect of medical care kills more Americans than automobiles, cripples and blinds thousands more. Every year the U.S. invests hundreds of millions of dollars in medical research, the Public Health Service points out in a new pamphlet called The Costly Time Lag; but lives are lost or blighted "because the knowledge gained from research is not fully used." Main time-lag costs:

¶ At least 40,000 cancer deaths (including almost 13,000 women with easily detectable cancer of the cervix) could be prevented every year if available treatments were fully applied.

¶ Rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease are largely preventable with prompt penicillin treatment of "strep throat," but take 20,000 lives annually.

¶ Glaucoma can be detected cheaply and painlessly in a few seconds, but more than 500,000 Americans have the disease in an early and unrecognized form; all will suffer severe loss of vision, and each year about 4,500 are blinded.