Whenever I hear the word WAR, the first thought that comes to mind is death. With death comes sacrifice and with sacrifice comes being a HERO. Many people hear the word WAR and think of our soldiers out at sea. They don’t think about the kids who are at WAR with themselves. The kids who see more hospital walls then they do school walls. The kids who are battling Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Research has changed over the past ten years in trying to discover the cure for kids with cancer, but it’s not going as planed.
Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (A.L.L) is a type of cancer that includes a white blood cell called lymphocytes that pack around the bone marrow of an individual. Therefore, it prevents it from making red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets properly. “Although the origins of most leukemias are still a mystery, certain factors are known to cause or increase the risk of developing the disease”,stated by Jane E Brody, a writer for the New York Times. One example would be, too much exposure to radiation. “X-rays can increase a child’s leukemia risk two to four times” as Brody continues. Without the kids being fully developed, we are putting them at risk by exposing them to early to X-ray radiation.
Another cause is through genetic factors. It is more common found in one twin if the other twin was to be diagnosed with cancer. “The other has one chance in five of developing it too” Brody says. Children born with Down’s syndrome and other disorders involving abnormal chromosomes also face a high risk of getting the diseases. It is still uncertain for sure what causes A.L.L but the research is being done.
Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia runs in my family and it once ran through me. When I was at the age of three I started to become really sick and no one could tell us what was wrong. I went in for a bone marrow test on September 3, 1999 and it came back positive with A.L.L. On September 21, 1999 the cancer was completely out of my system. That didn’t satisfy the doctors though. I was still in remission undergoing chemotherapy for three years after, until the doctors were for sure I was cancer free. Back in 1999 there hadn’t been that much research done for kids with A.L.L. so for me it was a 50/50 shot that I was going to survive.
Since the doctors caught the cancer so early on in the development stage, they were able to kill the disease in such a short amount of time. My white blood cells didn’t work properly, so if I was to get a cut on my knee, my body couldn’t heal it as fast as someone without cancer. Your white blood cells help cure the body and fix it, but with someone who has very little white blood cells, they can get sick much easier. Like I said, it was a 50/50 chance that I was going to survive, but with today’s research the percentage has gone up to around 90/100 percent. So what exactly has been going on over the past ten years for the percentage rate to go up so high?
Back in 2005 cancer research was at an all time crisis. Few of the drugs the doctors were using were being marketed, and most of the drugs were enormously expensive and provided very little benefits that patients needed. Some of the drugs include vincristine, asparaginase, anthracyclines (doxorubicin, daunorubicin), cyclophosphamide, cytarabine (ara-C), and epipodophyllotoxins (etoposide, teniposide). "We need to develop cancer drugs differently," the chief operating officer of her agency, Dr. Janet Woodcock, said. Only after a few more tries and test, the agency was able to prove and approve the use of Nexavar, a drug that officials described as “a major advance” in cancer research. In 2005 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved clofarabine (Clolar) for treatment of ALL in children. “This drug was the first new leukemia treatment approved specifically for young patients in more than a decade.” Gardiner Harris, writer for the New York Times says. Many steps have been taken to get to where we are now and it seems like 2005 was a huge stepping-stone.
In 2010 a new testing was being done to treat and cure Leukemia patience. William Ludwig was the first patient treated in this experiment at the University of Pennsylvania. The first thing the doctors did was remove a billion of his T-cells – a type of white blood cell that fights tumors and viruses in the body – and gave them new genes that would then program the T-cells to attack the cancer. At first there was nothing happening but after ten days, things started to get interesting. William began shaking with chills, his temperature shot up, blood pressure dropped. He started to become so ill that the doctors thought he wasn’t going to make it. They put him in intensive care and warned him that he might die. A few weeks went by and the fever was completely gone; so was the leukemia. “ There was no trace of it anywhere – no leukemic cells in his blood or bone marrow, no more bulging lymph nodes on his CT scan” stated by Denise Grandy. In the end, the doctor's calculated that the new treatment had killed off up to two pounds of cancer cells. If that’s not progress then I don’t know what is.
The research from 2010 is still being used today. It has only been used in a small number of patients and it did not work for all of them. But experts consider it a highly promising approach for curing other blood cancers and tumors in organs. It’s awesome, the research that is being done but since 2010 there has been no further research. “ 4% percent of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) annual budget is dedicated to childhood cancer research. The result is that children are dying every day waiting for promising new treatments that lack funding,” stated in The Truth 365. With this being said, cancer research is at another all time crises.
So you can see that within the last ten years, cancer research has had its ups and downs. The main problem seems to be that we don’t have enough money to fund cancer research. So get your needles ready and your blood cells lined up, because we are off to WAR.
Bibliography
"Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL)." The New York Times, March 8, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/acute-lymphocytic-leukemia-all/treatment-after-relapse.html.
Brody, Jane E. "Personal Health." The New York Times, October 30, 1985. http://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/30/garden/personal-health-064700.html?pagewanted=1
Grady, Denise. "An Immune System Trained To Kill Cancer." The New York Times, September 12, 2011. . http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/health/13gene.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Grady, Denise. "Cell Therapy Shows Promise For Acute Type of Leukemia." The New York Times, March 20, 2013. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/health/altered-t-cell-therapy-shows-promise-for-acute-leukemia.html.
Harris, Gardiner. "New Drug Points Up Problems in Developing Cancer Cures." The New York Times, December 21, 2005.
"The Truth 365." The Truth 365.
