Friday, November 02, 2007

I was "on the road again" in a campaign bus rolling through East Texas when I got two e-mails. One of the most creative and bright talents of Austin, Karen Kuykendall, had lost her battle with lung cancer. And moments later, another digital shocker, an Austin business leader and dear friend, Kerry Tate, has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

The irony of the day was that I was on Lance Armstrong's Survivor One Bus trying to persuade Texans to vote for Proposition 15 on Tuesday. Prop 15 will create the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute and fund it with $3 billion in state bonds that will be used in a decade long project to find cures for cancer.

This in the same year we are trying to recover from the cancer deaths of Ann Richards and Molly Ivins. How many more do we have to lose before we collectively yell, "We are not going to take it anymore!"? I am mad as hell at cancer, and that's why I named my group trying to find a cure for cancer: killcancer.org.

I am also mad as hell about the opposition's lies about the need and impact of Proposition 15. Let's start with their claim that we will use the money to do human cloning and already prohibited stem cell research. That's a lie to fire up the anti-stem cell people. We are talking cancer research, not stem cells. Dr. John Mendelsohn, head of M.D. Anderson says we can do needed cancer cure research without the use of embryonic stem cells and the argument of human cloning is a cruel joke on the voters.

I am mad as hell about the idea that we cannot afford to spend the money on curing a collection of 100 types of cancers — the leading cause of death in America today. Cancer kills more children than any other disease. Cancer costs Texans more than $30 billion a year, and they say we can't afford to spend $300 million a year for 10 years and make cancer a distant memory just like polio is to us today?

I am mad as hell at people who say they don't want to spend the money because I can't guarantee them we will find a cure. No one could guarantee a polio vaccine until we tried and no one guaranteed we could send a man to the moon until we tried. I believe in science and the promise of technology if we commit with determination and resources just like we did when the nation started the space program or WWII's Manhattan project.

I cannot guarantee the future of prevention and cures for cancer. I can guarantee that one out of every two men, and one out of every three women will have cancer in his or her lifetime. I can guarantee that we will not kill cancer unless we try. I can guarantee that Texas will become the global leader of cancer research if we pass Proposition 15 on Tuesday.

We lose one American to cancer every minute of the day — 1,500 each day. It kills so many people we forget we are losing the war against cancer. We have gotten use to it. We do not have to give up and agree that it beat us. Medical scientists say we are on the brink of many discoveries. Now is the time to double our research efforts, find the cures and get on with surviving and thriving A vote for Proposition 15 is a vote to cure cancer in your lifetime.

Cathy Bonner is the founder of killcancer.org and the campaign chairwoman for Texans to Cure Cancer.