Advocacy Alerts Sent Out – Cancer Research Could Be Cut by Congress

At the beginning of the year the National Cancer Institute faced significant proposed cuts to cancer research funding.

The organization is urging all citizens to contact their senators and representatives and let them know that cancer funding should be a priority and they should reject any funding bill that results in a cut to cancer research.

For letters to send out go to pancan.org (Pancreatic Cancer Action Network).

“Cuts to cancer research are not acceptable,” said a PanCan rep.

“I believe all cancer research is important, but my life has been most impacted by pancreatic cancer with my brother and niece’s deaths, and when I saw the need to bring its research up to the level of so many other cancers, with it being the fourth leading cancer killer in the US, with it’s 99% mortality rate,” said Virginia Griffin, PanCAN Team Hope Fort Worth, TX volunteer coordinator. “I lost my mother to lung cancer (she had smoked), I had a brother who survived colon and prostate cancer, a sister who’s survived ovarian cancer; my maternal grandmother died of esophogeal or stomach cancer (not sure exactly which and in fact it could’ve began as pancreatic cancer) amd my mother’s family has been riddled by all kinds of cancers! I’ve got a granddaughter, 17, who survived leukemia, when she was 18 months old, after two bone marrow transplants from her almost four-year-old sister at the time. So yes, I take all cancers very seriously! That just gives you the broad spectrum of how it has impacted my life, in addition to the many patients I have cared for through my almost 30 years being a nurse, plus 14 yrs before that working in hospitals (since I was 14).”