By Don C. Reed
For all who suffer chronic (long-lasting or incurable) disease, you know the financial expense can be enormous.
Cancer has greatly afflicted my family. My mother died at age 52 from breast cancer; my older and younger sisters passed from leukemia, a form of blood cancer, and my wife of 50 years was taken by pancreatic cancer.
Personally, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Given a choice of treatments, I opted for basically everything: surgery, radiation, hormone injections. The name of the latter escapes me, but the syringe was like a harpoon.
The costs were staggering–$990,000. Just shy of a million bucks…Fortunately (and to my delight) the insurance covered it all
But would I be healed? After the surgery, the doctor told me:
“The prostate is shaped like a Mickey Mouse hat. Your cancer has spread to the edge of the “ears”, and maybe past that. If it grows too far and gets into the bloodstream, that could be fatal,” he said, “So let’s hope we got it all.”
A series of blood tests showed nothing negative; I almost forgot about it.
But then it was time for another cancer check, a colonoscopy, to seek out colon cancer.
There was no pain; I just lay on my side and a miniature camera was inserted. The idea was to take samples and remove potentially cancerous growths.
I slept through the procedure, woke up, and went home.
In the fullness of time I got a letter in the mail. I did not hurry to open it.
But when I did, the note said:
“Your biopsies…. show no signs of cancer or infection. No future screening for colon cancer is recommended at this time…”
According to the Center for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), “1.8 million Americans are diagnosed with cancer every year (at a cost of $233 billion)” with more than 600,000 annual fatalities… (1)
Cancer’s cost is expected to be more than $240 billion by the year 2030, and it is only one of the chronic conditions plaguing America.
The total cost of American healthcare is roughly five trillion dollars. Of that mountain of money, 90% ($4.5 trillion) goes to the treatment of chronic diseases, including cancer. (2)
I was treated, not cured. Like a partial amputation, portions of my body were removed. I had good treatment, and they caught it in time.
What America needs is reliable long-range research funding, a systematic quest for cure.
The golden state’s magnificent stem cell program, (the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, or CIRM) has paid for millions of dollars in cancer research; the National Institutes of Health (NIH) paid for a great deal more. The cancer research portion of the NIH is called the National Cancer Institute (NCI ) and it is the largest funder of cancer research in the world.
How important?
“For the past 50 years, every significant medical breakthrough, especially in the treatment of cancer, has been linked to sustained federal investment in research at NIH and NCI. This has contributed to…over 18 million cancer survivors…living in the U.S. today…” (3)
Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has proposed enormous budget cuts, selecting roughly 40% of the entire program for elimination.
Read the chilling article, “NIH budget cuts threaten the future of biomedical research…”by Niamh Ordner, Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2025. (4)
It details how the Trump Administration proposes to eviscerate the NIH.
However, a judicial decision restored some of the cuts. Two thousand three hundred (2,300) research projects were to be terminated by the Trump Administration; of these, nearly half (nine hundred) were restored, by order of the court. (5)
Back and forth, the struggle continues. It is long and difficult, but we dare not turn away.
And if we keep plugging away, refusing to surrender, our time will inevitably come—and the reward may be nothing less than life itself.
https://www.cdc.gov/chronic-disease/data-research/facts-stats/index.html
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2025-07-06/nih-budget-cuts-threaten-the-future-of-medical-research-and-young-scientists
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/research/2026/01/02/nih-approves-100s-grant-applications-it-shelved-or-denied