So the sky "isn't" falling? Hmmmmmm Add up the published claims about disease prevalence and the average American has at least two ailments at a time. Who's pushing the high numbers? Skeptical bio-statisticians blame drug companies and reporters for much of the hype. They also blame research institutes and disease foundations seeking more public spending on particular diseases. ''They always take the high-end numbers,'' said Mary Grace Kovar, a senior health statistician at the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center in Washington. ''They want the money, power and prestige'' that flow when a disease looks like a major problem. Former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Harold Varmus, who's now the president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, fought hard against using such estimates to justify research spending. He called it ''body-based budgeting'' and argued that NIH's billions should be targeted instead to areas that promise the greatest scientific and therapeutic advances. Kovar and other biostatisticians fault reporters for trying to make new diseases newsy. Americans' health not as dire as it sounds | 
