"And they do try. For example, the Avon Foundation, one of the largest corporate-affiliated philanthropies contributing to breast cancer research, has donated over 700 million dollars to breast cancer education, research, and prevention since 1992, and over 175 million to research in the last decade. Avon expedites tests and advancement of cutting-edge discoveries with significant diagnosis and treatment potential like Beta Protein 1, a gene discovered by Berg which is expressed in the tumors of 80% of women with breast cancer and 70% of men with prostate cancer. Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Revlon, and the Susan Love Research Foundation and Love/Army of Women, also help make up the difference. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has been 'one of the key funding agencies' for the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, the state's only National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.

"In the world's wealthiest nation, with a government funding cut threatened, private industries are scrambling to fund live-saving research.

"The future of the new national health care law, which provides free preventive care that detects cancer early when it is more curable and could catch Stage I cancers before they develop into Stage IV, is also under fire. The future is uncertain.  We are in a budget-cutting spree.

"Under President Clinton and under the Obama stimulus, NIH's budget doubled, but efforts to maintain the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and the political insistence on tax cuts are now creating a fear throughout the research field that medical research funding will be sliced. To keep the breakthroughs and research going strong, the public must support cancer research foundations -- and press Congress to halt its efforts to dry up federal research dollars. If we want to fight cancer, and win, there is no substitute for the federal catalyst."

The article ran both online and in the hard copy of the Star-Ledger: blog.nj/njv_guest_blog/2011/02/keep_federal_dollars_coming_fo.html

SOURCE Robert Weiner Associates