Cancer.
Would somebody somewhere just come up with a cure already?
Two more people I know and admire were diagnosed in the last couple days. Cam Lind and Pastor, Dave Ellingson.
Two others..including my nephew’s wife, Jodi Lund.. who undergoes a double mastectomy this week. Her breast cancer came back after eleven years. And popular Sioux Falls radio D.J. “Cade” who will have surgery next week for a recently discovered brain tumor.
I’ll bet everyone reading this also knows of someone going through the same gut wrenching worry and fear after receiving a diagnosis.
I wonder. What’s it going to take?
Money?
Is finding a cure for cancer a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it?
Seems like that’s what Jerry Lewis and the Muscular Dystrophy Association have been trying to tell us for decades but there’s still no cure after all those telethons that hinted over and over that we were “this” close.
Maybe there will never be a cure for cancer. It’s like doctors and pharmaceutical companies say there is no one cancer to wage war against. It attacks in so many forms and the success of treatment varies from person to person.
Radiation, Chemotherapy and outrageously expensive cancer drugs appear to be the only effective way to deal with the multi-faceted disease other than a basic regimen of personal good-health and exercise.
Oh, wait..there’s “Immunotherapy” ..said to be the biggest breakthrough since chemotherapy..aimed at stimulating the body’s own immune system to fight invading cancer cells. They’ve even got the guy who plays Cam from “Modern Family” as a spokesman to raise money for research.
But why do they need celebrities to shill for funds if this is really the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for in the fight against cancer? Where are you Bill Gates..Warren Buffet..Koch Brothers..Walton Clan? Why not step up with your billions and lets do this thing?
Or how about our own government? Could the cost of a couple battleships or Phantom Jet Fighters be keeping us from eradicating this vile disease?
How about this for a presidential campaign slogan ala J.F.K in 1962 only substitute cancer for moon. “I choose to find a cure for cancer before my term is out. Not because it’s easy but because it’s hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are not willing to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
I don’t know about you but I could relate to a campaign promise like that instead of the same old prattle.
Now there are, of course, conspiracy theorists out there convinced that doctors and drug companies are all in cahoots and opposed to anything that would kill the golden goose.
Lord knows programs like 60 Minutes and other investigative news programs have certainly exposed lots of rotten apples in both those fields but even I don’t believe there’s an organized effort to squash efforts at finding a cure for cancer.
Perhaps it’s my personal frustrations that has brought about this blog..but I do believe more could and should be done besides a cancer society fun run or bake sale.
A higher priority needs to be set by this and other civilized countries to make cancer as distant a memory to our grandchildren as polio is to us.