My aunt was an Opthamologist. An MD who specialized in treating the eyes. In the summer of 1968 I worked for her as an opthamological assistant and even thought about joining her profession.
But it was the summer of 1968. Other events interfered and I left that dream behind.
Years after she retired to Arizona, she warned my father about the slash and burn technology of cancer therapy. She told him that it was a racket set up to fleece the public.
He learned the truth of her claims when he was forced to pay over $3000 a month for a drug that would reduce the nausea induced by chemotherapy or go without. He went without and refused an additional course of chemotherapy. He died.
When my husband was diagnosed in 1996 with Stage IV prostate cancer we were fortunate enough to find a Urologist at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego that put him on what was a new way to treat prostrate cancer using intermittent hormone therapy. Ed was the first patient at Balboa to try this method and he is still on it today, 16 years later.
It bothered me that at the time of his diagnosis there was no treatment for Stage IV other than chemical or surgical castration. There was no treatment because there was no funding for research and the medical industry didn't want to invest in it.
So we joined with other activists and became the National Prostate Cancer Coalition. We attended training seminars in DC and descended upon Capital Hill to lobby for an EARMARK. Yup, a real live earmark. We wanted the Appropriations Committee of Congress to earmark $200 million in the DOD budget for prostate cancer research.
Years earlier, the wife of a general thought that the federal government should pay for research into breast cancer. She persuaded her husband and others to request Congress to dictate the use of federal dollars within the DOD for this purpose.
Since there have always been more men than women in our military, it was no great stretch to ask for funding for research on a male cancer. We were very successful, and during the Clinton Administration the DOD began funding prostate cancer research.
My husband and I continued our activism, raising awareness and promoting the blue ribbon campaign. And then one weekend early in the first decade of 2000 we were invited to a conference of activists at UCLA.
UCLA was conducting a huge study on Vitamin E and soy isolate protein and its connection to PCa. We went to hear what they learned.
But the main sponsor of the event was a pharmaceutical company who worked in the field of prostate cancer and had promised news of a new breakthrough for men with Stage IV cancer. This was exciting, this is why we had travelled all over the country to drum up support for research. All of the work looked to be ready to be paid off.
The drug company paid for a luncheon and a study seminar at the conference. The seminar explained in detail how drugs were approved by the FDA, which most of us already knew, and how our lobbying efforts could help FastTrack the new drug therapy.
After the luncheon the "new" drug was revealed. This drug had the power to provide the therapy that currently took two drugs.
Yep, that was the stunning new revelation. They found a way to make more profit from a heartbreaking cancer. It added nothing new. No help for the side effects. No increased life span. Simply more profit.
We left that seminar and ceased our activism. I couldn't see spending all of that unpaid effort to line the pockets of a drug company.
But it taught me a very valuable lesson. As long as health is considered to be a profit center, there is no reason for the cancer/industrial complex to cure cancer. Cancer will only ever be managed to provide a profit. My aunt was right years ago when she called it a profit industry and a rip off.
Susan G Komen has been living very well on this business model. The top leadership is connected with the cancer industry. They have given a pink whitewash to a very dirty business. They do not cure cancer. They do not want cancer cured. There is no profit in that. Hundreds of millions of dollars has been thrown at the problem to allow the cancer industry to thrive and grow huge. At most women have been allowed to live. And have been sometimes told that their individual cancer has been cured. At an unimaginable cost.
Planned Parenthood simply provides medical services for women who desperately need it and have no other way to obtain it. There should be no confusion about how much good one does for all of humanity and how much good the other does for the cancer/industrial complex.
Throw away the pink ribbons. Get to work drumming up support for Planned Parenthood. Call your Congressional delegation and ask them to increase the federal funding for this agency that exists only to save lives. If you can get to DC, go to their offices. If you can't, then send a hand written letter asking them to help save women's lives through early testing and detection.
And ask the corporate cancer/industrial complex sponsors of SGK what they will do when these cancers are not detected early enough by Planned Parenthood for them to make a ton of money off of their treatment.