I am so sick of cancer. I have seen it eat away, like rust or termites, healthy individual’s lives, and the lives and futures of their families and friends. Whether it happens slowly over a long period of years or quickly over a few months; whether it is painful or pain-free, the wasting, the consumption, the evaporation of dreams and promises to one another, the snatching away of future weddings, graduations, births, celebrations of all kinds, extinguished like so many candles, this insidious disease remains unchecked despite science’s best efforts.

At a time when politicians throw snowballs on the floor of the United States Senate to convince us that global warming is a hoax (while prohibiting experts from testifying!), when those who deny evolution control the purse strings of the country’s science foundations, millions of people continue to suffer because we continue to lump 300 unique diseases into a single category and call them all “cancer.”

There will always be competing interests, but perhaps it would be best for our infrastructure priorities to be funded based on input from the nation’s most respected civil engineers and our most pressing medical priorities to be funded by input from our nation’s most respected physicians. Senator Inhofe holding a snowball in February proves nothing more than it is February, and in February one is likely to find snow in D.C.. Who would he have on the Appropriations Committee on cancer funding, Dr. Seuss?