Two of my best friends...friends I've known since middle school, both found out recently, that one of their parents had cancer. My friends mother, and my other friends father. How do you react to that as a son or daughter? What do you say to your parents to comfort them? I for sure wouldn't be able to find the exact words to express my feelings, because cancer itself is so ambiguous. No one knows what it's capable of. I say to them with much love, be brave, because I truly believe that everything will work out in the end. Spend as much time as you can with the ones you love and care about, whether they're family members or friends, live life with them. The following is from the SUTC (StandUpToCancer) website.
"For an increasing number of cancer activists, researchers and patients, there is too much death and too much waiting for new drugs and therapies. They want a greater sense of urgency, a new approach that emphasizes translational research over basic research--turning knowledge into therapies and getting them to patients pronto. The problem is, that's not the way our sclerotic research paradigm--principally administered by the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute (NIH/NCI)--is set up. "The fact that we jump up and down when cancer deaths go from 562,000 to 561,000, that's ridiculous. That's not enough," says Lance Armstrong, 36, the cyclist and cancer survivor turned activist through his Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF). "A new and more radical approach is being taken by groups like the newly formed Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C), which plans to finance research designed to deliver big leaps and home runs rather than the incremental improvements that are more typical of mainstream science. The new focus for funding grants, said Dr. Eric Winer, chief scientific adviser to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, in a conference address, is results: "What we want to see is research that is going to change the number of women that are diagnosed with, or more importantly, die of, breast cancer within the foreseeable future." Others, like the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF), are trying a no-nonsense business model to speed drug development.
"Doctors and scientists understand the frustration and the fear, and they don't necessarily mind the nudge. "We do need to change. Something needs to be done differently," says Tyler Jacks, director of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. "We have a lot of new insight, and we need to have a whole new collection of drugs, a new armamentarium."
Please support the cause, and support the fight for cancer. One day, hopefully sooner than later, cancer will be a thing of the past.
