May 13, 2024
The big South Carolina schools, Clemson and University of South Carolina, were caught up in the student Palestine protest movement sweeping the country. Small groups demonstrated, mostly peacefully, coordinated by an outfit called Upstate Voices for Palestine.
A couple of people were arrested at USC. Local TV news did a short squib on it. As elsewhere, the central crisis, the right to free speech versus the right to freedom from violence and antisemitism, was submerged in atmospherics like demands for “divestment” from Israel that ignore the complexities of how endowments are managed.
The Israeli-Hamas war explodes from ancient, intractable hatreds. The campus turmoil recalls the 1960s-1970s Vietnam antiwar protests, when schools nationwide shut down, buildings were bombed, people killed. U.S. forces were nearly all withdrawn from Vietnam by late 1972. North Vietnamese troops overran South Vietnam’s capital, then called Saigon, on April 30, 1975. The war ended, the protests ended. The country moved forward from historic tragedy.
America has victims of the current carnage, families of casualties and hostages. But news producers and editors know the Middle East conflict barely touches the lives of their audience.
What does? Cancer, now and forever. The American Cancer Society estimates that one in three Americans are affected by cancer, either as a patient or by disease of a family member. ACS projects that in 2024, for the first time, new cancer diagnoses will exceed two million, or 5,500 cases per day. More than 611,000 deaths are projected. That is 1,600 per day.
Because of earlier detection and a nationwide decline in smoking, annual cancer deaths have decreased over 20 years. But the ACS journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians forecasts an increase in cases of six of the 10 most common cancer types: breast, prostate, endometrial or uterine, pancreatic, kidney, and melanoma. (The other four are lung, colon and rectum, bladder and non-Hodgkins lymphoma.)
One in eight American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. Also increasing are liver cancer in women, oral cancers associated with human papillomavirus (HPV), cervical cancer in women ages 30-44, colorectal cancer in people younger than 55. Four of the cancers found to be increasing are “screenable”: breast, prostate, colorectal, and cervical. Endometrial, liver, kidney, and breast cancers are linked to excess weight.
The ACS provides grants to researchers, maintains a National Cancer Information Center, and conducts public health education campaigns like Relays for Life and Great American Smokeout.
While millions are spent on cancer therapy research, cancer remains what it is: malignant cells that multiply and overwhelm healthy cells. The vicious reality is that treatments: surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy, frequently are as traumatic as the disease.
Chemo is what it sounds like: drugs that cause toxic side effects at recommended dosages. The Washington Post report last week that a Food and Drug Administration initiative called Project Optimus, started in 2021, aims at lowering dosages to reduce side effects while maintaining drug effectiveness.
The FDA effort acknowledges that many cancer drugs cause side effects so debilitating that patients skip doses or stop taking the drugs, allowing their cancers to resurge. For example, a lung cancer drug, sotorasib, manufactured by Amgen, is prescribed at doses that cause severe side effects. The FDA required Amgen to conduct a study that showed that lower doses were effective against tumors, with fewer side effects.
Cancer drugs are based on chemotherapy, which destroys healthy cells along with cancer cells. Surgery, radiation, and immunotherapy offer hope of longer life for some patients, but fail for others. My year of immunotherapy cost my insurance hundreds of thousands of dollars for no benefit.
Cancer patients have powerful allies. The American Society of Clinical Oncologists (ASCO) carries out groundbreaking studies and research. The ASCO Foundation has provided more than 8,700 research grants in 88 countries. The American Association for Cancer Research (ASCR) supports and funds critical research, and publishes the journal Cancer Research.
Community action matters. Outside the medical research world, order-of-magnitude smaller local organizations across America work to raise hope. In our town, the Neighborhood Cancer Connection, formerly the Cancer Society of Greenville, provides holistic physical and emotional support, medical and non-medical financial assistance, at no charge, for cancer patients and their families.
Founded in 1965, the non-profit NCC offers counseling for patients and family members and nutritional products and medical equipment like wheelchairs, walkers, prosthetics. The group spends more than $200,000 annually for nutrition support to patients It supplies toilet and bath-assist items, gloves and masks, wigs, hats, turbans, and others.
Fighting cancer is big business. At the end of 2022 ACS, which operates nationwide, raised and spent nearly $2 billion. The NCC’s ongoing capital campaign aims at raising $4.5 million.
NCC walks a different path, devoted to core values at a local level. The organization’s mission statement declares that “We focus on creating, expanding, and connecting a robust community of patients, survivors, volunteers, family and friends, and donors to create the strongest, most consistent support system we can.”
The statement continues: “For us as companions and citizens, to love is to serve. We actively seek for ways to assist, support, and provide hope to our own neighbors facing the emotional and financial toll of cancer. Because we are able, we are responsible.”
On the Road 