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OPINION
SPECIAL TO MSNBC

A growing number of celebrities are using their star power to raise funds and awareness for an array of diseases. Julia Roberts is pushing for federal dollars to fight Rhett’s syndrome. Supermodel Christy Turlington raises awareness on emphysema. West Wing star Brad Whitford is the voice for autism. And, of course, Jerry Lewis has been hosting his annual Labor Day telethon for muscular dystrophy for 37 years. But do celebrities on soapboxes really help?

LEWIS has his critics. Some people wonder if he is exploiting the parade of “Jerry’s kids” who appear on the show along with all the singers, plate twirlers and jugglers. But his telethon has after all raised $1.7 billion.

And Roberts recently went before Congress to push for funding for a very rare genetic condition called Rhett’s Syndrome. This is a terrible affliction but not one that affects many people.

She was following Christopher Reeve, who had just been there asking for money to find a cure for paralysis. And Michael J. Fox is well-known for his support for research on Parkinson’s disease. There are plenty more celebrities plying the halls of Congress or leading fundraising campaigns looking for dollars to be directed toward the disease they care about the most, from AIDS to breast cancer to ovarian cancer.

And they all should be applauded. I am happy that Lewis still takes the time to do the telethon. Roberts deserves praise for bothering to go before Congress. And Fox has shown nothing but commendable caution in the way he has tried to draw attention to a terrible disease without letting his celebrity overwhelm the exciting science that may lead to a cure in the not so distant future. They are most certainly doing the right thing.

The problem is simply that there are not enough celebrities doing what Lewis, Roberts and Fox do. Some diseases, such as alpha-1 antrypsin disease, Canavan disease, bulimia or lupus, have no celebrities willing to go to the mat for them. Some ailments are just too stigmatized or uncool to attract celebrity support. It is hard to imagine J-Lo or Jennifer Aniston leading a march on Washington to demand more research on urinary incontinence.

The problem with celebrity fundraising is simply that it is not fair. Celebrities who try to lobby Congress sometimes don’t know the science well enough to know what is the best way to spend the nation’s research budget. So the budget can get distorted and some people with real diseases that have a real shot at a cure if only the money were spent on them lose out.

Clearly it is an advantage to have celebrities involved in drawing attention to diseases and raising funds.

But remember, for every celebrity who tells us about the hope for a cure or the need for Congress to act to win the war on some malady, there’s probably another group that is just as worthy, but which has not been lucky enough to attract a Jerry Lewis.

Arthur Caplan, Ph.D, is director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.