I have been contemplating a post honoring
Childhood Cancer Awareness Month for quite some time now, but the death of Patrick Swayze to pancreatic cancer yesterday encouraged me to pull the trigger.
As a family who has faced cancer, my heart goes out to Patrick Swayze's family and friends, those he loved and those whose lives he touched. I generally do not jump on the celebrity-praise bandwagon, but here I am thinking of him as an individual. As a man who had parents, romantic partners, and a real life in our world beyond what we saw on screen and in tabloids. The death of any human being to cancer is a tragedy.
Without a doubt, we should driving funds, resources and support toward all human beings (regardless of age, race, diagnosis or disease status) that face cancer. For me, for obvious reasons, childhood cancer has a particular priority. Children can't advocate or act for themselves, but they rely on parents and other adults to create a healthy world for them.
I won't say that we are failing, but we could certainly be doing better. From 1975 through 1995, the incidence of cancer diagnosis in children increased by about 0.8% (that is, almost 1%) per year. Remarkably, during this same time frame, the mortality of cancer in children declined 40%. More children are being diagnosed with cancer, but fewer are dying of it.
Source: Childhood Cancer Mortality. Although mortality is on the decline, we are not living up to our obligation to care for and guard children. For example, in 2008 the National Cancer Institute spent $264,641,062 on leukemia research, with less than 20% allocated toward pediatric leukemia.
Source: NCI Funded Research Portfolio. Compare that to the vast amounts spent on adult cancers, and the funding disparity is obvious. Children are simply placed on the back burner from a funding perspective.
This inequality has a direct effect on the treatment of children diagnosed with cancer. New drugs are developed for adult cancers and only later tested to see if they happen to work for childhood cancers too. It is an extremely rare occurrence when a drug is researched, designed and implemented to treat pediatric cancer as its primary goal. By the numbers, the statistics are chilling:
In fact, of the 120 new cancer therapies for adults approved by the FDA between 1948 and January 2003, only 30 have shown use in children. Of those 30 drugs, only 15 acquired any labeling for pediatric use during that same 55-year period. Source: Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, August 2006.
FIFTEEN new cancer drugs labeled and approved for children over 55 years, compared to ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY for adults. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
To see the personal effect that this is having, all you have to do is get to know the stories of the children in heaven that are linked on Viva la Vivi. Vivi, Aiden, Diesel, Jonathan, Ethan, Owen P., Mackenzie, Bubba, Ben. These sweet babies are just NINE of the innocent children who have not had the chance to grow up, will never be movie stars, will never have a romantic relationship, will never have a job, will never graduate high school, will never have the joy of being parents.
As a nation, we mourn the death of celebrities from cancer and rightly so - we should mourn every death to this truly horrific disease. I will never engage in tragedy-comparison and say that children's deaths are somehow "worse" than the deaths of adults who had the opportunity to engage in some or all of those momentous life events, but I will say that it staggers me that we as a society comfortably go on with our lives and accept this situation.
So, don't honor Patrick Swayze by updating your Facebook status about his movies or buying a memorial issue of People magazine. Honor his life and battle against this disease by supporting cancer research in any way you can and of any kind that touches your heart most. And honor Vivi and her friends in Heaven by sharing the message for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
As a family who has faced cancer, my heart goes out to Patrick Swayze's family and friends, those he loved and those whose lives he touched. I generally do not jump on the celebrity-praise bandwagon, but here I am thinking of him as an individual. As a man who had parents, romantic partners, and a real life in our world beyond what we saw on screen and in tabloids. The death of any human being to cancer is a tragedy.
Without a doubt, we should driving funds, resources and support toward all human beings (regardless of age, race, diagnosis or disease status) that face cancer. For me, for obvious reasons, childhood cancer has a particular priority. Children can't advocate or act for themselves, but they rely on parents and other adults to create a healthy world for them.
I won't say that we are failing, but we could certainly be doing better. From 1975 through 1995, the incidence of cancer diagnosis in children increased by about 0.8% (that is, almost 1%) per year. Remarkably, during this same time frame, the mortality of cancer in children declined 40%. More children are being diagnosed with cancer, but fewer are dying of it. Source: Childhood Cancer Mortality.
Although mortality is on the decline, we are not living up to our obligation to care for and guard children. For example, in 2008 the National Cancer Institute spent $264,641,062 on leukemia research, with less than 20% allocated toward pediatric leukemia. Source: NCI Funded Research Portfolio. Compare that to the vast amounts spent on adult cancers, and the funding disparity is obvious. Children are simply placed on the back burner from a funding perspective.
This inequality has a direct effect on the treatment of children diagnosed with cancer. New drugs are developed for adult cancers and only later tested to see if they happen to work for childhood cancers too. It is an extremely rare occurrence when a drug is researched, designed and implemented to treat pediatric cancer as its primary goal. By the numbers, the statistics are chilling:
FIFTEEN new cancer drugs labeled and approved for children over 55 years, compared to ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY for adults. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
To see the personal effect that this is having, all you have to do is get to know the stories of the children in heaven that are linked on Viva la Vivi. Vivi, Aiden, Diesel, Jonathan, Ethan, Owen P., Mackenzie, Bubba, Ben. These sweet babies are just NINE of the innocent children who have not had the chance to grow up, will never be movie stars, will never have a romantic relationship, will never have a job, will never graduate high school, will never have the joy of being parents.
As a nation, we mourn the death of celebrities from cancer and rightly so - we should mourn every death to this truly horrific disease. I will never engage in tragedy-comparison and say that children's deaths are somehow "worse" than the deaths of adults who had the opportunity to engage in some or all of those momentous life events, but I will say that it staggers me that we as a society comfortably go on with our lives and accept this situation.
So, don't honor Patrick Swayze by updating your Facebook status about his movies or buying a memorial issue of People magazine. Honor his life and battle against this disease by supporting cancer research in any way you can and of any kind that touches your heart most. And honor Vivi and her friends in Heaven by sharing the message for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.