"1 year cancer free", Emily Whitehead Foundation. 2014..
Hope and Second Chances
Technology has advanced so much in the last hundred years that becoming sick with cancer is no longer the end it be all. Society is filled with hope and cancer can never take that hope away ever again. Fear is no longer the immediate and only option when facing cancer.
Emily Whitehead
"7 Year Old Girl Beats Acute Lympoblastic Leukemia: Emily Whitehead's Immunotherapy Story",Cancer Research Institute. 2013.
"At only six-years-old, Emily Whitehead was facing a life-threatening recurrence of acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common childhood cancer."
- Cancer Research Institute
"Emily's cancer resisted over 16 months of chemotherapy treatments when her parents were told that her cancer had relapsed and that she would not survive."
-Cancer Research Institute
"As of May 2019, nearly 7 years since her treatment, Emily Whitehead remains cancer-free."
- Cancer Research Institute
"7 years cancer free", Emily Whitehead Foundation. 2019.
Grant McTaggart
"On May 24, 2009, after additional tests, transfusions and a bone marrow biopsy, my precious, 2-year-old Grant began his fight against Philadelphia Chromosome Positive Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, a condition in which less than 50% of those inflicted survive."
- Texas Children's Hospital
"Grant began an arduous 32 months of grueling chemotherapy treatment at Texas Children's Cancer Center."
- Texas Children's Hospital
"Grant's Cancer Survival Story: Beating Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia," Texas Children Hospital. 2013.
"It was an arduous path, but he continued fighting. With assistance of multiple therapies, the support of family and friends, and the clinical trial of a drug...he gradually recovered. Finally, Grant received his last chemotherapy in early August 2012."
- David McTaggart
Cancer Moonshot Initiative
"The mission of this Cancer Moonshot is not to start another war on cancer, but to win the one President Nixon declared in 1971."
~Joe Biden, "My Report to the President." 2016.
"Vice President Joe Biden tours a laboratory at Sloan Kettering Rockefeller Research Labs." Photo by David Lienemann. 26 May 2016.
"The Vice President, Joe Biden, has brought a new urgency to the Federal government efforts to fight cancer, and forged new partnerships and created new programs and policies. Individuals and organizations throughout the private sector have also stepped up to the charge, forming new partnerships to defy the bounds of innovation."
~“The Vice President's Cancer Moonshot,” National Archives and Records Administration. 2016.
"Congress passed the 21st Century Cures Act in December 2016, authorizing $1.8 billion in funding for the Cancer Moonshot over 7 years [...] Congress appropriated $300 million to NCI for fiscal year (FY) 2017, $300 million for FY 2018, $400 million for FY 2019, and $195 million for FY 2020."
~ "Cancer Moonshot," National Cancer Institute, 2019.
"President Barack Obama applauds after signing the 21st Century Cures Act into law in December 2016." Photo by Chip Somodevilla. 2016.
Although not all cancers have high survival rates and remission is still an ongoing possibility, society is progressing towards an age where treating most types of cancer is possible and that is all thanks to the first invention of chemotherapy. The barrier of inevitable demise from cancer shattered and to this day barriers brought about by cancer continue to be broken.