The news that Senator Ted Kennedy has brain cancer has brought the subject of cancer treatment and cancer research back into the public spotlight. What we're seeing isn't pretty; federally funded research has been cut to the bone.
Even the Main$tream Media is finally getting it. CBS News is running a series titled:
Are We Retreating in the War on Cancer? (CBS) Nearly half of all men and more than one-third of all women in the United States will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. And yet, since 2004, federal funding for research into the four most common kinds of cancer - lung, colon, breast and prostate - has been cut by $102 million. Is enough is being done to stop this killer? This is the first in a series, "The War on Cancer: Where We Stand."
They are America's foot-soldiers in the war on cancer - young scientists whose research may someday lead to better treatments and even cures.
But experts worry this small elite army is leaving the field in droves because government funding, which once allowed cancer research to flourish, is now drying up.
Until 2003, funding for cancer research was being increased; since 2003 it has gone downhill. Only 1 in 10 cancer research proposals are funded. The government-funded basic research is where new approaches to treating cancer may come. The big-pharma funded research is focused on new drugs, getting those drugs approved by the FDA, and of course, marketing them.
This is personal to me, as it must be to most of you. I've lost too many of the people I love to cancer: The woman I love, my Dad, a favorite uncle. All lives cut short by different forms of cancer.
I'm absolutely infuriated that curing cancer and saving lives is taking a backseat to spending on new and better ways of dealing death. :grr:
This really should be an issue in the 2008 campaign.