Approximately 2 years ago Malecare and the New York State Prostate Coalition began asking questions about where the State of New York was hiding approximately $3,000,000 in funding for prostate cancer research.

Each year New York State residents are asked to check off a little box on their state tax return donating an additional dollar of their personal money to prostate cancer research. This little box was checked off about 3,000,000 times and $3,000,000 was sent to the State of New York. However, Malecare and the New York State Prostate Cancer coalition could find no record of even $1.00 having been disbursed from these check generous donations from the residents of New York State!

Having made this discovery, Malecare, along with NY State Prostate Cancer Coalition, met with some members of the New State Assembly to ask where these funds were and and why they had not been used to support prostate cancer research. The answer we received was, basically, “I don’t know.”

Eventually we made some headway.  Last week the New York State Governor, Andrew Cuomo made a formal announcement that finally the $3,000,000 had been allocated towards the fund’s goal, curing prostate cancer. Based on this announcement 20 research institutions in New York State will share a total of $3 million in funding to explore innovative concepts in prostate cancer detection, diagnosis and treatment.  Not a great surprise, the governor has taken credit for providing $3,000,000 in prostate cancer funding as if he is writing the check himself.  Malecare, along with the New York State Prostate Cancer Coalition made enough noise so that the governor and members of the state legislature had no choice but to remove these funds from the General Fund and support the desire of the residents of the Sate of New York who made personal contributions to support prostate cancer research funding.

Malecare and the New York State Prostate Cancer Coalition applaud that these funds have finally been committed to the task for which 3,000,000 New Yorker’s had been lead to believe they were going to be used instead of to the State’s General Fund. New York State’s failure to support prostate cancer research in a timely manner is reprehensible. We hope that in the future the State will follow the mandate of its citizens as well as establishing additional funding streams to  to support New York State Institutions in their quest to cure prostate cancer.  This is good for the State of New York, for its citizens and for the many prostate cancer survivors, both in and outside of the state.