So, I’m doing the Susan G Komen Race for the Cure next month and I have had at least three people say things like this: They do this race every year. How much money have they raised already and they don’t have a cure? I don’t see the point anymore. It’s probably being wasted on administration instead of being spent on research to cure cancer.
The people who have asked me about this often seem quite upset about it and have sworn off running the race because they’re SO ANGRY that there’s no cure for breast cancer yet.
Well, first off, do you know how much that research costs? Not even the research, but the cost of developing a new medication, which includes all of the trial testing they have to do. Even if they HAVE a cure, they won’t be able to put it on the market for another ten to twenty years while they do trial testing and ensure that taking the medication won’t cause some other fatal disease in the process of curing your breast cancer.
If you want to be mad about something, be mad that we’re spending all of this time and money researching a “cure” for cancer rather than spending it on finding out what CAUSED it in the first place. You want to cure cancer? Stop it from spreading. Stop letting corporations sell us food and products that are hazardous to our health because it’s “convenient.” It doesn’t look so convenient after you’re on chemo or having your breast chopped off, does it?
I would LOVE to participate in a Race For the Cause, but, sadly, that doesn’t exist. Anyway, I’m just out there to get my 5K on. I’m not trying to find a cure for breast cancer. I know they aren’t going to find one until they stop looking under the wrong stones.
P.S. Ran my first 10K of the year today. Finished in 79 minutes. Yeck. Hopefully I’ll improve by the end of the year.
June 14, 2009 at 10:02 am
I Googled ‘race for the cause’ and your blog was nearly on the top. Somehow I have come the same conclusion that you have. Why is there not such a race? Is ‘race for the cure’ even an appropriate name in the first place. Maybe it should be entitled ‘race for a treatment’.
Maybe, just maybe we already have the cure. But we don’t really want to use it. Maybe the cure is the modification of the DNA of the unborn. Once you find out that your body is a good host for cancer it seems a bit late to be talking about a cure.
June 14, 2009 at 10:46 am
Jeremy, thank you for the thoughtful response. I often wonder myself about DNA modification. I used to actually have this theory that cancer was evolution working but because we’ve messed everything up so badly, nature’s changes are killing us instead of helping us survive better. Is that a weird theory?