Do I have any friends whose lives have not been touched by cancer?
If your life has been touched by cancer -- your own, a family member's, a friend's -- then you are probably aware of how difficult a disease it is, but you may or may not know this:"The country’s cancer death rate has declined 33 percent since 1991, thanks largely to cancer research that has led to new treatments, gains in early cancer detection and, most significantly, a sharp decline in tobacco use, according to a new American Cancer Society (ACS) report."
In addition, five-year survival rates for many types of cancer have improved, and the treatments themselves have fewer side effects.
The research that leads to these improvements is a global effort, but the biggest funder of research (across all fields, from astronomy to zoology) in the world is the United States National Institutes of Health.
This kind of work takes DECADES. It is not work that can be started and stopped on the whims of individuals; an unplanned-for pause can literally destroy decades of work. It takes dedicated researchers, clinicians, and hospital staff; drug development science and chemical engineering; complicated distribution and testing systems; work to understand and mitigate tradeoffs in the effects on the body, work to sort out differences in effectiveness for people with different body types, current health and genetic backgrounds; and above all a system that is built to create AND SUSTAIN the workforce we need, including universities.
When we work for the common good, without thought of profit or politics, the U.S. makes the world a better place.
https://www.cancercenter.com/community/blog/2023/01/cancer-survival-rates-are-improving
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