Running With Fear

In the meantime, I'm writing my own obituary (which will say I died, not passed away, left us, or passed over to the other side) and planning my own funeral.

SOAPBOX NO. 6: NIMBY TO THE MAX

Photography by bootsy holler

Jeanne Sather

Details

Jeanne Sather is a Seattle-based writer and editor. She has worked for Newsweek's Tokyo bureau, the Puget Sound Business Journal, The Seattle Times, and Reuters. As an editor, she has helped launch two publications, including Washington Law & Politics magazine. She currently writes for the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance's Web site: www.seattlecca.org. Also see Jeanne's Diary online.

Related Content

• For Political Reporters, Seattle Means Good Eating
  February 29, 2012
• Seattle PostGlobe's Post-Mortem: Bad Blood and Correction as Site Closes After Two Years
  August 1, 2011
• Google Hears Antitrust Drums Banging, Blames Microsoft as Principal Percussionist
  February 9, 2011
• Buying a Dreamliner in South Carolina Is Like Buying a John Deere in Washington
  April 19, 2010
• Ben Bridwell's No Longer with Sub Pop Records, But He's Still Pitching in For the Family
  December 1, 2010

More About

• Herceptin
• Charleston (South Carolina)
• Eric Schmidt
• Medicine
• Cancer

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Weekly Newsletter: Our weekly feature stories, movie reviews, calendar picks and more - minus the newsprint and sent directly to your inbox.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Clinical trials are essential to cancer research. Without clinical trials, new drugs and treatments cannot be approved. No matter how promising a new treatment looks when tested with lab animals, it cannot be used to treat people until it has been carefully evaluated through the several phases of a clinical trial.

Most Americans understand this, and the majority of people surveyed on this issue say that no drugs should be given to people until they have been thoroughly tested for safety and effectiveness in human subjects.

But here's the kicker: The majority of Americans, something like 80 percent, say drugs must be tested on humans, but only about 4 percent or 5 percent of adult cancer patients actually volunteer to take part in clinical trials themselves.

This is NIMBY-ism on an incredible scale. What do these people (who want the newest and best cancer treatment and want it yesterday) think researchers are going to do, test the new drugs on people in the Third World?

Those of you who don't have cancer aren't off the hook, either. Sign up for a prevention trial, and do your part for humankind.

PERHAPS THE BEST thing about my experience as a breast cancer poster child is that all sorts of people (including friends of friends, people I will never meet face-to-face) call me when a friend or family member is diagnosed with cancer. Typically, they feel helpless and don't know what to say.

For me, that's less of a problem now. I make gentle suggestions of ways to help and things to say. These words?and the tens of thousands I've written in Jeanne's Diary for various Web sites and in this story?are what I have to give. They are also my memorial, what will remain when I am gone.

info@seattleweekly.com