Walks to Cure Cancer?

Cancer Research UK (which organises Race for Life here in the UK) is currently joint funding a trial called Foxfire that is looking to improve the outcomes of patients with inoperable bowel cancer with liver mets. It uses highly targeted radiotherapy microcapsules injected directly into the blood which becomes trapped in the liver cancers destroying them without damaging healthy tissue combined with chemotherapy to shrink the bowel cancer to the point where it can be surgically removed. I know of one patient early on in the trial who went from having inoperable bowel and liver cancer with a very poor prognosis (months live) to being in complete remission at 12 months after diagnosis.

Charities supporting cancer research have existed for quite some time (over a 100 years) and a lot of the knowledge about cancer and treatments that are very common now were often funded by these charities years ago. The research that you are helping to fund could be saving peoples lives in the future for years to come.

Totally ineffective. But the goal was publicity and awareness (and involvement) and not so much the cash collected.

See Charitywatch.org

Advancements in cancer research? You mean, doing more of it? I am sure that researchers have an ongoing quest to find out as much about cancer as possible. You don’t hear that much about the causes though except through individual posts on the internet. Seems to me we hear the same things: antiperspirants, our water, our air, our food, drycleaning solvents, GMO’s in our boxed, processed “foods.” Some throw genetics into the mix. Then we hear of all the cancer cures then silence. If you never donate another dime it will make no difference as far as more research being increased. Walk one hundred miles and it’ll make no difference in the number of people cured. You could do your own research and find out how much of each one of your dollars goes to fund lavish vacations of the CEO’s of these companies. Many are very highly paid. I notice that many people are told by a smiling oncologist, “your tumor has gotten smaller; the treatment is working.” This is called remission. My friend was in remission for a week . The tumor is still there; it’s just smaller Do what you think you should be doing but , in my opinion, If you want to make a bigger difference in the world, why not donate to your local food pantry and/or animal shelter? Or the Salvation Army? Huge companies give thousands each year to cancer research. Maybe you could make a bigger difference locally.

I’ve wondered about this question myself. Over all the decades that I’ve seen funds being collected for cancer research, diabetes, etc., you’d think that if this were something money could help, it would have done a lot more by now.

It’s not just a matter of wondering how much goes into the overhead of various foundations, charity administrators, etc., and how much really goes to support advances in prevention and treatment. @YARNLADY‘s link appears to be an answer to that. It’s also a question of how much money can do in some absolute sense. If funds were unlimited, would we have a cure tomorrow? Somehow I don’t think so.

@Jeruba has things closer. As a biochemist I can tell you the funds are very helpful, but everything takes time, you need both. And a lot of these problems are extremely difficult. This onion article actually hits very close to home (though, we are making progress, though it can seem like that sometimes). It’s like saying “we’ve been funding physics for decades, where’s our teleporters?” Also, there is an issue of what gets funded, and a lot of time it’s more basic research that may take a while to see benefits, because the discoveries have to have time to get implemented. You have to have a good understanding of the immune system before you can pull off things like this, for instance

Also, considering the current funding landscape in the Americas and good sections of Europe, private sources of funding are always good to have on hand. If you’re wondering about the specific charity group, @YARNLADY‘s link as well as Charity Navigator can help you there. But yes, the funds get used. And I believe many institutions list where they award the grants to.

And lastly, I take issue with your response, @Aster. That kind of thing about the causes and cures of cancer are not the result of science. Quite the opposite, they are usually the result of bad media distortions of the science if not pseudoscience. Cancer is an extremely difficult problem to solve (and pretty much every case is different to some extent because of the genetic changes involved) but we’ve already increased the life expectancy by decades for some cancers. But since it happened over a long time and there were few exciting ‘cure’ moments, it doesn’t get reported. A new pharmaceutical that increases life expectancy by a few years does not a major headline get. But a handful of those over a decade and now people can beat, say, breast cancer at far higher rates. Also, a large amount of this money goes to academic labs, not private. These are scientists at universities, not highly paid CEOs. And a lot of those companies do very focused, high-level research, not basic research, which is much harder to fund because the results are not immediate. And even then creating and testing new compounds takes millions of dollars.

My mom used to work at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and she will tell you that sometimes there is too much money. The way I understand it, and @BhacSsylan can maybe correct me if I am wrong, the research kind of waxes and wanes. There can be a breakthrough that causes a lot of new hypothesis and great strides can be made, but then some years things kind of plateau. Government and non profits need to spend their budget, and so if they don’t really need all the money that year, they still spend. If they only use $3million when they were given $3.5million, they are afraid they will be cut next year, so it behooves them to spend it all to keep the funds coming in. Possibly charities can hold some money in a kitty from year to year, I am not sure about that. Anyway, money does get wasted sometimes whether it came from private or public funds, but there are medical discoveries that happen for sure. I know doctors at St. Jude Hospital, they do a lot of “walk” type things and many other fundraisers, and that place is incredible. Their devotion to cancer research and children is amazing. Their discoveries often help research for adults also.

There have been some great strides with cancer research. Breast cancer, one of the most well known for walk for cures, did research to prove lumpectomy is often as curative as mastectomy. We now can test for the BRCA gene. We previously thought chemo and radiation after lumpectomy helped prevent future cancers (depended on the cancer whether it was recommended) and now there has been research showing that sometimes that is not true and women can feel more confident opting not to take the harsh meds.

From what I understand diabetes is making some strides with transplants. It might be for type I only, I am not sure.

Heart disease, especially women’s heart disease, is finally getting attention and some real research. Specifically I am impressed with the charity Barbra Streisand set up and the cardiac research facility she created in California. I saw an i terview with the lead researcher and I was extremely impressed. I feel they have already made incredible strides in a short time.

Someone above mentioned awareness, and that is a big deal. We used to not even say breast in public in America, women suffered and died practically in hiding. That was kind of true for all cancer patients many many years ago, but more recently breast cancer still lagged behind, because oooh, it is a breast after all. Women’s health issues for years, even still now somewhat, gets overlooked, unless someone takes up the fight. Anyway, Susan Komen’s sister suffered and died from her breast cancer with little support and when these matters were not discussed in mixed company, and Susan was saddened and outraged by the way society viewed and handled illness, especially when it is a “female” body part. She was incredibly effective in her mission to raise awareness and the funds have helped with research. She did such a good job women worry about breast cancer more than heart disease, even though heart disease is much much more common. The awareness she raised also saves society money, because more women early detect cancer because if raised awareness most likely.