Okay, I am very new at this but do want to attempt to make a difference in legislation addressing funding for cancer research. I found this WONDERFUL link on the American Association for Cancer Research’s web site:
You plug in your zip code and this page will list your state and local representatives (and the President). It will even walk you through easily emailing these representatives. You just need to input your own information and email message. They will add the salutations, put the email in business letter format, address and send the emails to your legislators. Can’t get easier than that!
I encourage all of you to do this. It’s easy, especially through the AACR link, and it can only help our goal of seeing cancer defeated. I talked to a woman recently who runs a marketing business. She said mail flyers are thrown away the first time and usually the second time they are delivered as junk mail, but by the third time the flyer is delivered, it is finally read. Maybe emailing politicians is kind of the same, they can disregard the first and maybe even the second email as not representative of the majority, but when they get a whole lot of them they finally really pay attention.
Via the AACR link I sent them all the email in italics below. Maybe you can do the same with your own story? My cancer experience has taught me not to do things that waste my time, and I truly believe this is not a waste of time, that it is something we can do to make a real difference. Something that may one day mean my web site and blog will become obsolite. I would love to see that day, a day when no part of my life is devoted to cancer causes because there are none.
I am a registered nurse and seven year survivor of a terminal cancer diagnosis. I was diagnosed with Stage IV signet ring appendiceal cancer when I was 41. My children were 10 and 11 years old at the time. This year I will see my eldest graduate from high school, being alive to see her graduate is a gift beyond words.
I have made the decision to use my survival to advocate for those diagnosed with cancer. To that end, I created a web site specific to my cancer over 2 years ago, www.appendix-cancer.com and also created the Appendix Cancer Survivor’s Blog.
I am also involved with the American Cancer Society as a member of the Colorectal Cancer Awareness Network and have recently founded a non-profit cancer support organization for those diagnosed with advanced abdominal cancers, the Abdominal Cancer Connection. My organization is in its infancy and was just granted 501c3 status by the Federal government.
I have most recently become involved in the American Association for Cancer Research’s Scientist Survivor Program and attended their annual meeting in San Diego last month. I became aware of innovative ideas for cancer research that cannot be pursued due to lack of funding.
Through my advocacy activities, I have become aware of the great need for funding for cancer research. Cancer affects all of us. Cancer kills 1500 daily in the US. We lost 3000 in one day in the Twin Towers, but we lose 3000 EVERY 2 days to cancer. Over half a million in the US die of cancer annually. The NCI budget is 4.8 billion dollars, but we’ve spent over 500 billion dollars on the war in Iraq. Cancer researchers who are unable to receive funding for their studies are leaving the field, or worse yet, leaving the country to do their research where their work can receive funding.
On behalf of myself and the many people fighting cancer that I communicate with daily, I ask that you please consider supporting or authoring legislation to increase funding for cancer research in the United States.
I’ll start this off with a confession. I don’t always vote, and sometimes when I do vote, I don’t really know who I’m voting for. I’ve never done a lot in the sense of investigating candidates prior to voting. I guess I’m one of those apathetic people who doesn’t have a lot of faith in the bureaucracy of government. I don’t really feel my vote or my voice counts for much. I slept through high school government and never wanted to invest the time into learning about or understanding the political process.
But my encounter with Dr. Geoffry Wahl challenged me. He is a cancer researcher passionate about finding a cure for cancer. He has a PhD in Biological Chemistry from Harvard University and was a Postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. He was the president of America’s oldest and largest cancer research organization. He’s someone worth paying attention to. His passion for defeating cancer is contagious.
Dr. Wahl challenged me to become involved in the political process that can direct our tax dollars towards cancer research, he feels that is the best thing we can do to help the cause. I also have a new friend who is a past graduate of the same Scientist-Survivor Program I just attended. She as a cancer advocate and survivor has become very involved in state legislation in Indiana that supports cancer patients. I really like her and admire her work also. That in addition to what I learned about Randy Pausch’s efforts has inspired me.
I’ve decided to take on the challenge. I have no clue how to influence the political process but have decided to learn. I began today.
I know I’m supposed to contact my government representatives. Well, I don’t know who my local or state government representatives are. So I Googled “Who are my state representatives in Indiana”. A link appeared at the top of the search page, www.in.gov/apps/sos/legislator/search/.
I clicked the link and another search engine appeared that directed me to government positions and to a map identifying my congressional district, then to the Senate (we have two senators per state elected for 6 year terms. I guess I learned that in high school government, but I’d forgotten). The page also directed me to legislation our representatives had authored and co-authored.
My two state senators were names I had heard before, Evan Bayh and Richard Lugar. The senators names linked to their individual web sites, so I went to the sites. Each of the senator’s web sites had search engines, so I plugged in “Cancer Research Funding” to see what came up. I hit pay dirt! On Senator Bayh’s site this popped up “US Senator Evan Bayh today introduced legislation calling for a dramatic increase in cancer research funding”. He’s on our side!
I sent Senator Bayh an email via his web site telling him a bit about myself and my cancer advocacy efforts. I requested to be contacted to learn how I could support his efforts to increase cancer research funding.
Not bad for my first day ever trying to become involved in the political process, I don’t think! And it took me less than an hour!
I was asked by the American Cancer Society long ago if I was interested in becoming a legislative ambassador, at the time I said no (I didn’t do politics). I think I need to go back and talk to them to learn more about that.
I am going to finish my series of posts about my AACR experience, which was so enlightening, with a post about cancer research funding.
In the United States, cancer kills about one person per minute, 1500 people a day. We lost 3000 in one day in the Twin Towers attack, but it takes cancer two days to kill that many…but it does that EVERY two days. We lose 564,000 people a year to cancer. Seventy-two percent of cancers occur in those over 60 years old, and as the baby boomers age, the number of cancer cases in the US will increase 30-50% by 2020. Cancer isn’t going away.
In the US we spend $226 per person per year on soft drinks, but only $16 per person per year on cancer research. The National Cancer Institute budget for 2008 is 4.8 billion, and we’ve spent $517 billion on the war in Iraq. Funding for cancer research has not increased since 2004, and in real dollars factoring buying power, that represents a 15% decrease in cancer funding over just the past 4 years.
Only 10% of grant proposals for funding new research are now being approved by the National Cancer Institute because of lack of funding. So only one in every ten potential cancer cure gets a chance to be tested and explored. Young scientists who have the best and brightest minds in the field are leaving cancer research as they cannot obtain the funding to do their trials and cannot make a living in the field.
Many scientists who want to stay in the US are now finding careers outside of cancer research, but those who are willing to leave the states are being paid large amounts of money to conduct their research in other countries like China, Singapore and India. Any discoveries they make will become the intellectual property of those countries. We may one day have to travel to China to have our cancer cured, or die at home wishing we knew what might have saved us.
I listened to a cancer researcher and former president of the AACR, Dr. Geoffry M. Wahl, speak about cancer research funding for about an hour. He was passionate about funding for cancer research, passionate about seeing cancer defeated, passionate about supporting the great scientific minds who want to do research. He made such an impression on me, his passion was contageous. He so inspired me. I asked him just how I could help when he was done speaking. He told me to get involved in government, to talk to my state representatives, talk to my congresspersons.
Yikes…I’m ashamed to say I don’t even know who those people are, I’ve never done anything like that, I’ve never been involved in the political process. The idea intimidates me, but so does cancer; so I’m going to try to learn what to do. Maybe I can help some of you reading my blog learn from me as I muddle through figuring out how to make a difference in the political process.
I found a great example of someone who is doing just that, though, Randy Pausch. I was told of Randy Pausch by cancer advocates I met in California. Randy is a 47 year old professor, husband and father of three young children. At the university where he teaches, professors give a “Last Lecture” to their students, a hypothetical lecture they would give if they were about to die and had to impart final words of wisdom to their students. He gave that lecture, but with a twist, it really was his last lecture. Randy Pausch has advanced pancreatic cancer with a 100% chance of dying in a few months. He is using some of his last days to do what Dr. Wahl told me to do, get involved with my state representatives, do work in the political environment to help get more government funding for cancer research.
This is an 8 minute video of the talk Randy Pausch gave to congress. PLEASE watch the video below. It will amaze and inspire you. His experience with pancreatic cancer in some ways is like our own, we have a cancer that’s almost as deadly. Much of what he says applies to many cancers, including our own. Maybe some of us can follow his example.
