Reading through the blogs, I noticed that the entries have been dominated by football news, chart entries and random spells of intellectual reckoning [all of which coming from the boys!] so this is one from the girls, but an open debate for all. This blog leads on from the point raised today regarding the funding going into various types of cancer…

 

After looking at a few websites, the following table of statistics gave me a base on which to debate the amounts being given to various types of the disease and whether or not these variations in funding are fair?

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/cancer-funding-does-it-add-up/

The table is from an American study, although i still think that this is useful as it can reflects how funding is approached in other countries as well as our own. As we can see, lung cancer receives the least funding and yet kills the most. Who decides how official funding is distributed and are they right to choose one form of cancer over another? Does it come from personal experience or does it grow from preconcieved notions that people with certain cancers either deserved or ‘asked for it’? Also, how are people who fund the causes privately influenced? What have they seen or heard that has made them feel more drawn to a particular kind of cancer over another?

All of these are questions will no doubt spark personal ideas and beliefs of your own, but from a personal point of view…all cancer is a terrible thing to be threatened with, no matter how undeveloped or how tragic. Whatever kind of cancer hits home to you the most, you are likely to feel negative emotions rather than positive ones, so why is such a terrible experience further dampened by the thought of knowing that there is someone with more support than you, there is someone that has decided that you are not as important as someone with breast cancer [this receives the most funding]?

With such dark times in both the past and future of cancer patients, why does the light of hope shine more brightly for some rather than others? A common view is that people with lung cancer ‘deserved it’ because they smoked or still do. According to cancer research uk, around 90% of lung cancer cases are a result of smoking; however, what about those who smoked, realised the danger and quit? Do they still have to be punished for their past decisions, decisions which they sort to change for their own benefit? I think not, and who has the right to punish those who do still smoke? Is smoking illegal? No, it is not. Therefore, as smokers are not breaking the law and are in no way lower than those who do not smoke, why are they given less funding due to this idea that they are? Frequently, we hear of criminals gaining greater rights than which the majority of the British population would allow, so why do those who obey the law have to suffer greater consequences than those who break it?

I feel that some of you may be falling asleep at my constant blast of rhetorical questions so i will punish you no more. I just thought it would make a change from the plagarism of Sky sports news updates, anyway, have a good evening.