There's been a post brewing inside me that hasn't come into being because I don't have the right words. The words aren't there because the thoughts aren't fully formed yet either. I have three children who are going to grow up living in this world whether I like it or not. The world, I mean, whether or not I like the world. I do like the world. I think it is good. God made some pretty cool stuff. We've messed up a lot of it, but we've done a lot of good, too. I don't agree with all of it, though.
I hope that my children never have to deal with cancers of their own. If they do, I hope that it is so far in the future that an inconceivably benign treatment exists by that time. What I would like more than that, though, is that cancer not be an issue. Not for them or for anyone else. Herein lies the crux of the post that I can't quite get together yet.
We (citizens of the world) spend a lot of time, energy, and money on finding a cure for cancer. We absolutely should continue to do that because people are going to continue to get cancer and will need treatments. All of these resources are going toward the back end of the disease - fixing what is already broken.
What if we focused on the front end? What if we gave as much time, energy, and money preventing the body from being broken in the first place? This is a tangled subject, thus my impasse.
Stay tuned...
News from The American Cancer Society: Here are what some of our brightest researchers have been doing — to give you a sense of the kind of breakthroughs support for the American Cancer Society makes possible. They are vital partners in the fight to make this cancer's last century.
ReplyDeleteJust this week, it was announced that a former American Cancer Society research grantee is one of the three scientists receiving the 2013 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology! Dr. James E. Rothman, along with two colleagues will be honored for defining the control of the movement of membranes in cells; which contributes greatly to the understanding of cell functioning in numerous diseases, including cancer. These internal cell membranes are key to the function of cells and the ability of cells to move, both of which are hallmarks of cancer cells. In 1982, while at Stanford University, and in 1988 while at Princeton, Dr. Rothman's research was supported by an American Cancer Society research grants.
Investing in researchers like Dr. Rothman is possible because of donations to The American Cancer Society. Here are just two of the other advances that may help cancer patients in the future that have been made possible by American Cancer Society supporters:
A new device that can detect tumor cells in your blood - The Herringbone-Chip is capable of finding rare circulating tumor cells also known as CTCs. CTCs are living tumor cells which are thought to be metastasizing and they are very hard to detect because very few of them are in the bloodstream. With this new microfluidics-chip, tumor cells could be found much earlier and could save lives.
A new way to predict if aggressive cancers will spread or not - The presence of a specific type of molecule called miR-101 may be the link that allows doctors in the future to predict whether a tumor will remain contained or if it will be very aggressive and spread. What's more, new research suggests that some cancers could be contained by putting miR-101 into tumors that have lost it.