A few people have asked me about brain tumors in children, how common is it? Can't they just be removed? What about "benign" brain tumors - Well as for the latter, I see nothing
benign about benign, ie non metasticizing tumore...not a darned good thing has come it except that as more are affected, more become aware and a few become active in answering the other questions. How much can
we do with little fundraisers like the one here on SL?. Here are the answers:
"13,500 children 19 and under diagnosed each year in the US.
36 children diagnosed each day.
175,058 children are diagnosed each year worldwide (age 0-14)"
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Funding Disparities
Despite these facts, childhood cancer research is vastly and consistently underfunded.
In 20 years the FDA has initially approved only two drugs for any childhood cancer – 1/2 of all chemotherapies used for children’s cancers are over 25 years old
Research and development for new drugs from pharmaceutical companies comprises 60% of funding for adult cancer drugs and close to zero for childhood cancers.
However, the NCI spends 96% of its budget on adult cancers and only 4% of its budget on children’s cancers.
In dollar terms, NCI’s funding for pediatric clinical trials is $26.4 million while funding for AIDS research is $254 million, and breast cancer is $584 million.
Pharmaceutical companies don’t commit resources to childhood cancer research because the adult cancer drug business is viewed as more profitable and less risky to them.
Accordingly, there is an estimated $30 million a year gap in childhood cancer research funding"
http://www.icareicure.org/get-informed/c...cer-facts/
Why are individual funds and awareness raisers so important? Because we are more powerful in the long run that all the existing research efforts when it comes to pediatric brain tumors.
Pediatric & Adolescent Incidence (Ages 0-19 Years)
An estimated 4,620 new cases of primary malignant and non-malignant brain and CNS tumors are expected to be diagnosed in the US alone in 2015
http://www.cbtrus.org/factsheet/factsheet.html
Isn't it shocking that there are this many affected and so little attention and research for the kids? They didn't choose this - It chose them. The FDA and pharmaceutical companies are dropping the ball on this one. So it's our responsibility to champion the cause of children and show them that We Are Paying Attention. So we have fundraisers, we write letters...like the song says, "We Are The Champions". If not us, who will speak for these children and their families to devastated to speak for themselves?
