Last night was the CNN and You Tube Republican presidential debate. I was very disappointed with the quality of questions that they chose to ask the candidates. It seemed that the selection of videos was not as serious as I would liked to have seen. The selection leaned heavily to the dramatic and the absurd. I do understand that the producers were creating a TV show that needs to entertain, but they left out so many excellent potential questions.

In the interest of full disclosure, I do need to remind you that I did submit a video. Although I hoped it would be selected, I did not expect that it would have been among the chosen. I do not believe that my negative response is related to imy video not being selected.

I was very shocked that the producers ignored the entire field of health care issues when making their selection of videos to use. This is upsetting because it means we have not made an impact on national politics. At a time when we are experiencing a decline in real dollars being allocated for cancer research we cannot afford to be invisible. Nevertheless, it looks as though we remain invisible.

I hope that some of us will hear the call and decide not to allow the status quo to be maintained. We cannot expect improvements in diagnostic tools or treatments without the basic science research that needs to be performed. We can no longer afford the drain of young researchers who cannot find adequate funding in the United States.

This will not change unless we find a way to not be invisible. We need to be heard and we need to be seen now.

Joel T Nowak, MA, MSW