SportsCancer Recap: ASCO2023

A Humble Musing

2018 was the last ASCO I attended, directly representing Stupid Cancer on behalf of the global adolescent and young adult cancer community.

Fast forward five years, and, this time around, I felt like I was representing every American who has ever been absolutely screwed by our policies, practices, and seemingly incentivized corporate culture's apathy for realizing the truth — that the patient (e.g., American voter) is the ultimate end user and who intrinsically deserves to be a highly compensated critical decision making corporate asset to drug development, and not some passive "nice to have" to tick a box and go home at 5:00 pm with a pat on the head.

Does research matter? Yes. But research is for "someday."

Meanwhile, today, millions of real Americans with real families needlessly lose their jobs, homes, and livelihoods while praying that GoFundMe comes to their rescue—while being blamed and pitied for not self-advocating.

And no breakthrough molecule, fast-tracked FDA approval, new clinical endpoint, groundbreaking diagnostic, patient advisory board, Series-B round, or M&E will matter to anyone wanting to live one more day to hug their parents, children, or themselves. They need help right now.

Complaining about the IRA is not going to solve this either. Joe/Jane Doe with cancer does not care who we are or what we kvetch about in the shadows. They want to get in the car, and it starts, then takes them to where they want to be.

I want to express my enduring gratitude to my dearest friends, family, colleagues, and comrades-at-arms who tirelessly (and sometimes fruitlessly) mud run throughout the "ant farm trenches" of America's darkened healthcare subbasements fighting for the rights, liberties, and freedoms of Americans who never asked to be sick in the first place.

"The people living with the condition are the experts" — Michael J. Fox.

Onward, upward, downward, and upward again.