Calling everyone to fight cancer
This week's Stand Up 2 Cancer nationally televised fundraiser promises to offer a rare and important glimpse into cancer research.
If successful, it also should remind people that the progress of cancer research relies more than ever on donations rather than government funding. This is especially true in South Carolina.
The Hollings Cancer Center at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) is the state's leading cancer research center.
Our mission is twofold: reducing the burden of cancer on South Carolinians by offering the best treatments available now, and searching in our laboratories for a cure.
At the heart of cancer research lies a fundamental question. What causes this disease? In South Carolina, cancer in its many forms will strike more than 21,000 people each year. And an estimated 9,000 of our citizens will die from cancer in 2008 alone.
Chief among these cancers are those that affect the prostate, bladder and kidney, namely urologic cancers. These cancers alone will affect more than 4,500 South Carolinians each year. South Carolina ranks third in the nation in prostate cancer deaths, with African-American men dying at nearly three times the rate as Caucasian men.
Once these cancers spread there is no cure. New measures are desperately needed to turn this problem around. To develop a cure for these diseases, the Hollings Cancer Center is proposing to establish a urological cancer facility that will house clinicians and laboratory scientists whose sole focus will be finding better treatments and a cure.
Cancer remains among the most serious public health threats in the state, which makes the Hollings Cancer Center's role so important. Our efforts to advance cancer research, expand access to new cancer therapies, and above all, increase hope, need the private financial support of individuals and corporations that want to stop this disease.
We call everyone to action. Together, we can "stand up" to cancer.
ANDREW S. KRAFT, M.D.
Director
Hollings Cancer Center
MUSC
Jonathan Lucas Street
Charleston
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