A Race For The Dough

Whether we melanoma warriors like it or not, the fact is that the race for cancer research funding is a popularity contest. I’ll resist my lawyerly penchant for providing footnotes for my sources of authority (after all, I’m in recovery) but here are some funding facts gleaned from a couple of hours of research.

► Cancer research spending by the federal government’s National Cancer Institute for each breast cancer death well exceeds spending per melanoma death. And among the five biggest cancer killers (lung, colon, breast, pancreas, and prostate cancer), breast cancer receives the most N.C.I. funding per new case and per patient death.

► The Department of Defense will spend $150 million on breast cancer research this year, but they don’t provide our servicemen and women with sunscreen.

I have absolutely no desire to take away a nickel of government or private spending for breast cancer research (or for any other cancer brand, for that matter). But I will continue to pursue my own little Quixotic campaign to increase melanoma awareness, regardless of how much it might annoy people who’ve yet to check into this Hotel, and I urge you to do the same.

October may be pink cancer awareness month, but let’s “show our style” by using this time as an opportunity to make our cancer just a bit more “popular”. According to the The Skin Cancer Foundation, women aged 39 and under have a higher probability of developing melanoma than any other cancer except breast cancer; and I can’t think of a more opportune time to inform folks of this ugly truth.

I’ll sign off with a new version of The Allman Brothers Band’s (and The Marshall Tucker Band’s) “Can’t You See”…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCXQycyN_Vs&feature=related


Gonna end this black reign
All ‘round the nation, lord
I don't care where it goes
Gonna climb a mountain
The highest mountain
I’ll sound off
Somebody gonna know

Can't you see
Woah, can't you see
What Black Cancer, lord
It been doin' to we
Can't you see
Can't you see
What Black Cancer
It been doin' to we

I'm gonna find C
A hole in the wall
gonna crawl inside and die
That cancer, mean ol' cancer Lord
Gonna tell us goodbye

Can't you see
Woah, can't you see
What Black Cancer, lord
It been doin' to we
Can't you see
Can't you see
What Black Cancer
It been doin' to we

I gonna keep a bloggin’ now
As long as I can
Ain't never goin' back
Grab me a soapbox
Seize the day like Komen, now
'Til these songs, they run out of tracks

Can't you see
Woah, can't you see
What Black Cancer, lord
It been doin' to we
Can't you see
Can't you see
What Black Cancer
It been doin' to we