3 Steps Forward, 2 Steps Back in The Fight Against Cancer
Please indulge me a brief moment away from the travel world.
While these drugs don’t necessarily represent a silver bullet in the gun fight against cancer, they’re one of the most promising steps IMO in recent years. The human immune system, with the right amount of will power, can fight off amazing things. But, scientists have never really been able to figure out how to prompt the body to fight certain types of cancer.
This new round of drugs showed a ton of promise in early clinical tries. So good they may skip a normal testing phase and move closer to getting these drugs into mainstream pipelines.
This is not a cure for cancer. Nobody really knows how far away we are from that. But I found this an interesting day to read this news. I just got through celebrating the life and mourning the passing of a man I always referred to as “Uncle Peter” who was actually my second cousin.
Peter Silbereisen was 79 years old and died (unnecessarily, IMO) from prostate cancer. Peter always acted just as young as we did as kids despite being 40 years our senior. When we would get scolded as kids, he was usually getting scolded right along side us. Boy, did he make life fun for me as a kid.
After the service was over and the family spent some time together laughing and crying and eating pasta, I hopped in the car to drive from Connecticut down to DC where we’re launching the next MegaDO. A big part of these travel adventures is fundraising. And, we’re well on our way to earning the first $5,000 of this event in pledges to LIVESTRONG.
So, today was a good and bad day in the fight against cancer. There were tears and a bit of laughter, and I expect more laughter this evening among friends at the MegaDO launch party. I am always touched by the stories people relate to me about their own cancer-related losses. Sharing those stories can be painful, but it sharpens my sword. I hope you’ll take a moment to consider helping raise awareness about cancer today.
