Dollars — public and private — spent on one area, have, of course, been diverted FROM another. I join you in desperately wishing to see greater support for research and treatment of prostate cancer, but having lost my dad to colon cancer, my secretary and my younger sister to breast cancer, my kids’ godfather to kidney cancer, etc., I would have a hard time arguing that spending on any one disease is more vital than another.

We know a lot about prevention, identification and initial treatments for some cancers — remember the world before colonoscopies and PAP smears, for example — but not nearly enough about metastatic disease — what makes the inital, often treatable, cancer, spread and do so much more damage.

It’s interesting to consider how much strength there might be in numbers — if all the associations for all the individual cancers were to cooperate, to fundraise and politic together, to demand that scientists and drug companies share their data and their research for general benefit. Just a thought . . .

Wendy (Joel’s wife)