Having an immediate family member with cancer means that you look for hope everywhere. Those who’ve brushed up against this family of diseases hopefully know that support groups abound. Given my schedule, I don’t get out much on workday evenings, but we recently attended a survivors’ event hosted by the Andy Derr Foundation (donations accepted). Two prominent local oncologists spoke and their tone was hopeful—always hopeful. What really struck me was how much cancer treatment has progressed even just in the last five years. The “cure for cancer” does not yet exist, but many technologies of hope do. I sat there awestruck. There are women and men spending their lives working to treat what used to be nearly always a fatal condition. It was inspiring.
On the way home I was musing about how much we could advance in human health care if we had the budget of the military. A vlogger we follow, John Green, happens to be a bestselling fiction author. He is now writing a nonfiction book on tuberculosis. This disease, for the most part, is completely treatable. His efforts have led to lowering the cost of supplies to treat it for cash-poor countries. I suspect he knows the same thing. Our government decides which priorities it will fund. Our fear—let’s be honest about this—funnels billions and billions to military budgets. (And you wonder why I watch horror movies?) I’m a dreamer, I confess. But what if, world-wide, we put our money into medical budgets? Can you even begin to imagine where we’d be by now?
I know most medical personnel are paid quite well. My family member’s cancer medication costs more than she makes in a year, per single dose. The technologies of hope those doctors were describing would be phenomenally expensive. If only as a nation we had trillions of dollars at our disposal. If only. None of this, of course, should overshadow the tremendous work being done by nonprofits like the Andy Derr Foundation. Channeling hundreds of thousands of dollars into research and treatment, they are making a difference. Those beautiful survivors there that night are proof of the lives they’re helping save. We have the ability to do amazing things. If we support, and love one another, we can overcome a scourge that many, many families will experience, if they haven’t already. Good work is being done. And the good will behind it is cause for great hope.
