Cancer: One War, But Many, Many Battles

A Presbyterian pastor in New Jersey (whose daughter is attending Chapman University in nearby Orange, California), who has been grappling with cancer since his diagnosis in December 2005, offers a battlefield-level realist's perspective on the war on cancer first declared in 1971 by President Nixon and now rejoined by another commander in chief:

It’s highly unlikely that a single, miracle cure is out there, waiting for some enterprising researcher to uncover it. Why, it’s even unlikely there could be a single cure for non-Hodgkin lymphoma – which, by all accounts, is a family of dozens of different diseases.

That’s no reason to stop trying, of course. Surely, there are cancer cures waiting to be discovered, through even modest increases in research funding. If the political slogan, “finding a cure for cancer,” is what it takes to build support for this cause, I’m surely not going to stand in the way.