thoughts on cancer

So, the other day, Elizabeth Edwards, Lance Armstrong, and Steve Case (AOL's founder) testified before Congress for them to renew the war on cancer that Nixon started. Because Bush cut funding for the NIH last year (or the year before, I can't remember) for the first time in decades, the NCI also lost money. This means less money to fund potentially life-saving grants and trials, less money to pay up and coming brilliant researchers - less money overall. Which leads to (most likely) less progress. (Did you know that what we spend in Iraq in 9 months equals the cumulative budget of the NIH for the past 30 years?) Elizabeth Edwards holds a fascination for me - I saw her at the LAF Summit in Austin in 2006, and she was amazing. Honest, authentic, hopeful.....and when her cancer recurred and was found to be metastatic, I was heartbroken. She and her husband live in Chapel Hill, but I haven't seen her yet!

There is a wonderful article in the NYTimes about how cancer can be a chronic illness, not the death sentence it is usually thought to be.