support Blood Cancer Research at Department of Defense
If you would like to help support blood cancer research — please consider sending a letter to your congressperson urging support of the establishment of a $10 million blood cancer research program at the Department of Defense. The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society has an easy to use internet form you can use, or better yet, you can send a real letter (you know, with a Forever stamp on real paper and all that).
We need better cures for the blood cancers — the blood cancers include the various leukemias, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Hodgkin’s Disease, and myeloma.
Just to give you an example — the current front-line treatment for Hodgkin’s Disease is the ABVD chemotherapy regimen. It only cures about 75% of people, and of the 25% not cured with ABVD or a similar regimen, half of those people can’t be cured with an even more severe chemo regimen and a stem cell transplant. So of the 8,000 people diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease every year, 1,000 or so will die. Many more suffer from treatment related side effects from the harshness of the drugs used in ABVD or in the harsher regimens.
Moreover, ABVD was first developed all the way back in the 1970s. In cancer terms, that’s ancient history. We need more up to date and better treatments — and of course not just for Hodgkin’s Disease, but for the other blood cancers as well, most of which have much lower success and cure rates than Hodgkin’s Disease.
Further, because the blood cancers have to be treated systemically (that’s why chemotherapy is used so much in their treatment), drugs developed will probably also benefit other people with a variety of different kinds of cancer.
So, if you will, please consider sending a letter asking your member of Congress to support blood cancer research. I know the blood cancers aren’t as popular as some other kinds of cancer (we don’t have an entire month dedicated to us for example and you won’t find our various colored ribbons adorning products in the store), so we need all the help we can get.
If you do send a letter, you have my sincere thanks.
Tags: ABVD, cancer, hematology, Hodgkin's Disease, survival
The online form no longer works. I’ll set aside some time to draw up a real letter to support your cause. I think that all forms of cancer research should be supported in general-type campaigns.