Cancer fights may advance health issues

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Cancer fights may advance health issues
Article Launched: 03/28/2007 12:00:00 AM PDT

Last week, former Sen. John Edwards announced his the recurrence of cancer in his wife, Elizabeth. He also announced that the crushing news wouldn't deter him from running for the presidency - that caused political fur to fly. Is he callous? Overly ambitious? Pandering for votes?

Over the weekend, conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh accused Edwards of using his wife's illness to get votes - it was vicious but not surprising nor unexpected. This is after all, presidential politics in America.

Ironically, now it's happened on the other side of the aisle. Tony Snow, the press secretary to President Bush, has suffered a recurrence of the colon cancer he battled two years ago and the disease has spread, reaching the liver, White House officials said Tuesday.

Snow, 51, a former television commentator for Fox News who joined the White House less than a year ago and has made his fight against cancer part of his public persona, underwent surgery on Monday.

In Elizabeth Edwards' case, questioning whether John Edwards would be too stressed or too distracted by his wife's illness to properly attend to the nation's top job makes for legitimate inquiry. Edwards himself said as much in an interview he and
Elizabeth gave Katie Couric on "60 Minutes" Sunday night.

Both said they - and only they - made the decision to stay in the hunt for the 2008 Democratic nomination. Edwards, looking squarely into the camera, told viewers not to vote for him out of sympathy.

All this makes for some lively political drama.

But the Edwards' decision - namely for Elizabeth and her husband to stay in a public horse race and campaign together - could change the way Americans view cancer and cancer treatment.

Elizabeth Edwards' disease - which first appeared as breast cancer in 2004 after her husband's unsuccessful run for vice president - can be managed, and it may not be a death sentence.

After a bone scan revealed the cancer had not only re-emerged but had spread to her bones, namely, her rib and hip, and doctors characterized her cancer as incurable but treatable.

Living with cancer. Some doctors are even suggesting this can be like managing diabetes. Or, perhaps the better analogy is managing AIDS/HIV - there is no cure, but potent anti-viral drugs stop the diseases' progression and allow a relatively normal, full life.

Hospitals are finding more targeted treatments for cancer. Chemotherapies and radiation protocols attack only the cancer cells while leaving healthy ones alone. Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, for example, has a new Trilogy linear accelerator for image-guided radiation therapy that minimizes damage to healthy tissue near tumors in the chest and abdomen.

In some cases, patients can now go in for chemo or radiation treatment in the morning and return to work in the afternoon.

Can people live out full, productive lives with incurable cancer? The answer often comes down to health care. Those with the best care have the greater odds of survival. Perhaps with these very public cases, issues of cancer treatment and health-care accessibility will be raised - and solutions reached.

source:www.dailybulletin.com