Fun and Fitness for the 40-Something

“Cancer Studies Want You!”

So proclaimed a Newsweek article several months ago. It went on to describe how healthy folks can help prevent cancer and “do more than write a check for cancer research” by participating in a nationwide study. The study will go on for at least 20 years but asks very little from participants.

The article caught my eye because I’d lost a very close friend to liposarcoma less than six months earlier. I was still feeling helpless and frustrated about the seemingly endless onslaught of cancer in this country.

The disease kills more than 1,500 Americans a day–A DAY!!!–and yet, the proposed 2009 budget for the National Cancer Institute calls for only $6 billion in funding. That might sound like a lot, until you hear that we spend $9.5 billion to $25 billion per month on the war in Iraq.

Jonathan Alter wrote recently that “[t]oday, only two in 10 grant proposals from qualified researchers are funded by the NCI, which means that plenty of possible cures die for lack of funding.” With cancer accounting for 25 percent of U.S. deaths, this just boggles my mind. I don’t know about you, but I worry more about dying from cancer than from a terrorist attack.

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