KEEP
THE
CANDLE
LIT
IN
MEMORY
OF
SOMEONE
. . . . . . . .
Below are the colors that represent the different
cancers in memory of anyone you know who has been
struck by cancer.
A Candle Loses Nothing by Lighting Another
Candle.
Please Keep The Candle
Burning!
Please copy and
e-mail this page to
make everyone on Earth aware that no one
of us is exempt from being touched by this
terrible illness, and that Worldwide Priority #1
must become a meaningful
treatment of complex cancers TODAY, and then a CURE as quickly as
possible. It is no
less urgent a priority than the problems of
Banking, Stocks, International Affairs, and
Homeownership ... all of these being vitally
important to our society to function. Yet so is
life itself.
If the world can find $100 billion annually
to fight wars, if
science
is able to
develop the ability to send men and robot
explorers to the stars, if we can decode the blueprint of how to
manufacture a human being, and if engineers could invent a nuclear weapon capable of
destroying all life on Earth and
even the planet itself, (done in only 2 years
when conventional thinking felt that it would
normally
take at least 50 years),
then
surely we should declare a "Manhatten Project"
TODAY on Cancer.
Though we are all
grateful that the progress in cancer treatment
over the past 50 years has helped many victims
in many ways,
the reality
none-the-less is that the path
we have been following in the "war on cancer" has come nowhere near to curing the worst forms
of this disease or even meaningfully extending
the lifespan of the deadliest form - Lung
Cancer - beyond 2 or 3 more months than if no
treatment had been given at all.
NON-SMOKERS do
get lung cancer, and young people in their 20s, 30s and 40s,
do get Lung Cancer ... or
Brain Cancer, or Ovarian Cancer --- nobody is
immune at ANY age.
Please
send a copy of this page to everyone you
know, so that this message blankets the planet
Earth in every language, and causes all of
humankind
to face the reality that Cancer
is so widespread a disease that it WILL eventually touch the life of every person
on the planet in some
manner ... rich or poor ... male
or female ... regardless of race or religion or social
standing or political affiliation ... no one is exempt!
The current research
and development system for finding a treatment, and
ultimately a cure, even with researchers working tirelessly
and making fascinating new
discoveries daily that help us to
understand the bio-chemistry of this plague,
has none-the-less NOT been working in
the way that humankind requires. Without any
finger pointing at all, that is the simple
reality.
Certainly if you have money to give, then give
it ... please. As much as you can. There is no question that money, and
plenty of it, is needed to develop
meaningful treatments for long-term
survivability from the complex cancers (such
as lung and ovarian). BUT it is clear
that after decades of trying, money
alone
is simply not the sole answer. Money can only create the potential
to develop meaningful treatments. CLEARLY
SOMETHING ELSE IS NEEDED IN ADDITION TO THE
CONTINUED FLOW OF MONEY ... SOMETHING THAT
WE HAVE NOT YET EVER HAD AS A PART OF THE
PROCESS ... AND IT IS NEEDING URGENTLY.
In much of science and technology, the success and the speed of developing new innovation is usually proportional to the amount of money thrown at it: like say, developing a new weapons system, improving the resolution and size of TV sets, building the tallest skyscraper on Earth, landing men on the moon, development of the computer and the i-Phone, heart and lung transplants, cloning, and sending cameras outside of our solar system. But with Cancer, it simply hasn't worked out that way.An enormous amount of money has been spent on cancer research in recent decades, (thankfully), but without yielding the full extent of results that we have come to expect from the financing of other great scientific goals. Even with lots of money, the traditional system of developing meaningful treatments for the deadliest cancers has fared far less well, although progress cannot be denied, especially in the case of the less deadly and less complex cancers. In many cases survival rates have indeed increased. But as a disease, Cancer is still the biggest killer behind heart attacks, and cancers such as lung and ovarian and brain are still almost always a guaranteed death sentence in spite of all the money that has been thrown at it!
A new approach from
the ground up is needed, with inventive,
dynamic and politically-uncompromised
leadership ... plus plenty of funding. And
it will require the mandate and the urgency of the
"Manhatten" and "Los Alamos" projects.
If you are a that leader, then pick up
the torch IMMEDIATELY and bring in others.
It may require
the launching of political battles in
the Congress of your country to
create another system from scratch, a system that
excludes being attached to, or requiring
funding from, the existing government agencies. Instead it
may require financing directly from the
government without having to apply to
existing agencies for grants. In order to
create a new 21st Century infrastructure for
this pursuit, there must be no
political strings attached. A new ground-up
approach will
need to be developed in order to create a revolution in thinking
that inspires bold new approaches to develop an EFFECTIVE
treatment and as quickly as possible. And it
may even be that drug development is not the
only, or even the ultimate, answer.
Part of launching a new approach,
then, may very well
start with
financial underwriting
from Governments, but for a NEW endeavor
with new rules and approaches. With
no disrespect intended to all of those
who today toil with great effort towards a common
purpose, the hard truth is that the
FDA has not been the answer.
NIH has not been the answer.
NCI has not been the answer. The
insurance industry and their symbiotic
relationship with hospital
administration (along with daily
computer printouts that calculate how
much the life of any given patient is
worth) is not the answer.
Pharmaceutical companies have not
been the ultimate answer for the
deadliest cancers, (though Gleevic has
been a wonder drug for a form of adult
Leukemia; and breast cancer, once
considered a death sentence, is today
often treatable). Genentech has not
been the answer, (though at a cost of
$50,000-$100,000 per year per drug, some of
their newest drugs may give some
patients with complex cancers extra weeks or months of
life expectancy; and to be fair, for
head and neck cancer the survival time
has doubled). Medical Doctors
who tirelessly administer the treatments according
to FDA instructions will
not be the ones to invent
the answer (though when new treatments
are created they will certainly help to
improve upon protocol design based on
their personal new experience). And as
helpful as they may be to many victims
and their families in many areas of
cancer and research funding, even the
American Cancer Society has not
been the answer.
After decades of research, the current system, even with money behind it, has not made a huge dent in the survival rates of the deadliest cancers such as lung and ovarian. No blame. Just a sad fact. It is important to spread hope, of course, but this must also be tempered by the reality that the war on the deadliest cancers has, in the big picture, been a dismal failure. But then what IS the answer? Only one thing is for certain. Without the dismantling any of the existing organizations and agencies being implied at all, an entirely new "system" must be created to try to find an answer in new, bold, and non-political ways.
Of course perhaps the answer could rest, in part, on
something as eccentric as an
X-Prize being offered. Or perhaps if a fortune
500 billionaire acquires a deadly cancer,
a billionaire with the correct inventiveness
and management vision, they will seek to
personally underwrite discovering a treatment
in "Manhatten Project" manner by investing a billion dollars
and bringing in the most dynamic
leaders and the finest minds in medical
research, place them into a Los Alimos-like,
state-of-the art facility, and encourage a
broad-enough vision to give the freedom
to pursue approaches that are untried and,
typically, never funded by Government
agencies, (the reality of grant awards is
that some broad areas of research are in political
vogue at any given moment, and some are not.)
Perhaps an effective treatment might be found in bypassing bio-chemistry and using purely 19th century mechanical answers that have never been seriously researched and funded --- such as blood filtration (a kind of "cancer-dialysis" machine) to remove cancer "messenger" proteins from the blood rather than just strictly looking to develop drugs as the answer. These "messenger proteins" were discovered in 2003, and constitute a "cancer language" of communication between the cancer cells themselves, between the cancer cells and the immune system (in the form of sabotaging defences), and even between the cancer cells with the blood vessels. Without this ability to speak to each other and issue marching orders for the birth of new cancer cells to take place, the cancer cells theoretically would not be able to duplicate and spread. Perhaps it may require such "out-of-vogue" ideas to succeed, ideas that are within the realm of science but not popular amongst those who award research grants, nor ideas that are in the financial interest of the drug companies. Even in science, "ideas" are political, and successful treatment may require development of ideas that don't typically inspire Government awarded grants. For example, a road that is barely ever funded revolves around development of a means of stopping Metastesis (the SPREAD of existing cancer). The successful grant applicant will be one whose approach deals primarily with the development of drugs to kill the EXISTING cancer cells. For some reason it is not popular amongst the granting agencies to want to explore the notion that if existing cancer cells cannot spread, then a victim may be perfectly able to still live a full life without ever being "cured." Drugs are "in" politically. Other less-explored techniques are not.
And for a new drug today to meet FDA approval for
cancer use, in addition to having low toxicity it
must also prove to extend life by at
least several weeks WHEN USED
ONLY BY ITSELF with no other drugs
alongside. However one of the current
theories for the future of the treatment of
the most complex cancers such as lung and
ovarian, called "targeted therapy,"
rests with the concept that the synergy of a
dozen or more drugs IN COCKTAIL may be the
only way to kill COMPLEX cancer
cells. Thus 12 drugs may be
rejected in Clinical Trials when given individually,
though it might prove that when used in cocktail the
total synergy could turn the tables. But
when it comes to Clinical Trials and the approval process as
concerns cancer drugs, the FDA does not take this into account,
(admittedly the FDA may now sometimes
combine 2 targeted drugs in a trial
cocktail, but given the concept behind
"targeted therapy" of a large
multi-drug cocktail, that attitude is a day late and a
dollar short.) The FDA may be great for
dealing with the one-illness, one-pill type
of diseases. But it is the WRONG agency to
oversee the approval of cancer drugs, where
complex cocktails may be the answer. Maybe
the process of developing drugs and
treatment protocols for cancer requires its
own specific agency that is built from the
ground up, constituted in a manner that will
keep it free of politics, and with a 21st
century approach.
And now we see that even the highly
anticipated approaches such as targeted
therapy (the "cocktails" mentioned above)
may STILL not be a viable answer given the
cost of paying $50,000-$100,000
annually for just a "single" drug, let
alone for a cocktail of a dozen or more
targeted drugs. Even if
it works!
The research
announcements and experimental results that
come out almost daily from University Cancer
Research Departments are very exciting to
read about.
The grants awarded by NIH and NCI are very
important. They surely will contribute to
resolving pieces of the puzzle,
and all of those efforts should be
maintained. But in addition to continuing to
fund the current system, a new agency
(possibly in the mold of the "Manhatten" and
"Las Alimos" projects") run by a new
generation of leadership is clearly
required; an agency that will break away from the old and
long-established approaches and create an
historic 21st Century effort to
find the means to defeat the deadliest
cancers NOW.
TODAY. FAST.
The leaders of this new approach to solving
the problem will have a passion, the will, the
access and the skill, to dare to lead a
revolution in re-inventing the process of
seeking a cancer cure --- research leaders whose
vision and path towards the seemingly
impossible goal of stopping lung cancer and
ovarian cancer and brain cancer from being an automatic death
sentence is akin to Barack Obama's achieving
the seemingly impossible goal of being
elected U.S. President barely a century after
the existence of slavery.
It can be achieved. But it is not
being achieved. There is someone who will
lead the call. But that leader has not yet
answered the call. A new infrastructure
can be created. But it has not come
anywhere near being created. Cancer can be
defeated. But our current system will not
likely be the source of that
defeat, though it will no doubt be of help.
More than just money is needed ... and money
IS needed. But of vital importance is that politics and
greed must not exist within this new
infrastructure --- a tough assignment in any
arena. A "constitution" directing
the aims of this endeavor must reject
financial gain as a motive ... even though
that same philosophy is essential to drive
the typical innovations within our economy.
As an example: a single "special"
mouse was discovered by accident at an
American University lab in 1998; a
mouse that, quite
by the fluke of a mutation, carried a unique
gene in its DNA that made this one mouse alone IMMUNE
to all human cancers, even when injected
with every type of human cancer at
thousands of times the lethal dose --- and
a
colony of thousands of offspring mice with the
same "immunity gene" has since been bred. Yet
squabbles over the "patent rights" and
collection of "future profits" prevented
all other research labs around the
world from obtaining and breeding
these cancer-immune mice for study.
The DNA of mice is very similar to that of
humans, and disease-killing white blood
cells in Mice are almost identical to the
disease-killing white blood cells in Humans. Many have considered this mouse
the most exciting discovery in the history of
cancer research, but it remained unexploited
due to a struggle over financial profits
even as tens of millions continued to die
annually of cancer.
When the Governments of humankind needed to cure
polio badly-enough, it was achieved;
or to send men to the moon in order to
politically beat the Russians; or to create
nuclear weapons capable of destroying the
Earth in order to defeat the Nazis. Mankind
has shown an
ability to make the seemingly impossible
happen, and at a rate accelerated beyond all
expectation, when it has
been made an urgent National Priority.
And w hen the AIDS patients marched on Washington in the early 1990s wanting the release of lifesaving drugs 10 years before the normal rules, it was forced to happen against the will of the FDA and the Big Pharmaceutical Companies. The combined voices of many could not be silenced. But Cancer has no protest movement. Perhaps it is time for that to change. Perhaps the urgent need for a treatment for complex cancers must become seriously political ... just like the atomic bomb and the race to the moon. And perhaps you, the very reader, are the person destined to lead that charge if only you dare to take the first step TODAY. What is that step? The successful candidate will have to invent it! And in doing so, you may have begun a process that will someday save the life of the person whom you love most in all the world.
This page is an
enlargement of a letter that was
circulating on the web to increase cancer
awareness. The controversial opinions
expressed on the need for CHANGE are those
of this web site administrator only.
Permission is granted to copy this page and
re-circulate and/or publish. This page is not protected by
copyright.
|