As a follow-up to the previous post I am posting a speech delivered by a prominent cancer researcher and advocate comparing resources devoted to the war on cancer versus the war on terrorism. I would add my own comment: shouldn’t we should finish one war before we begin prosecuting another?
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Fighting the terrorist within
By Geoffrey M. Wahl, November 17, 2006
Fighting cancer bears a striking resemblance to our fight against terrorism. Cancer strikes just as randomly and unpredictably, and it causes suffering, death and great personal loss to family, friends and loved ones left behind. Tragically, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks killed more than 2,900 people on that fateful day. On any one day, cancer kills more than 1,500 people in the United States alone – about one death per minute, or more than 564,000 Americans each year. To put this into perspective, that’s about half the entire population of San Diego, and more than the entire populations of Long Beach and Las Vegas. Tragedy is too soft a word to describe this kind of devastation.
To address the war on terrorism, the nation has committed ever-increasing resources to security, surveillance and weaponry for the military. To win the war against the terrorist within known as cancer, wouldn’t it be prudent to invest more of our resources to prevent cancer, and to develop effective detection methods and treatments for the 200 diseases