Mission

About
Pancreatic Cancer

     About Us

July 18, 2008

The Honorable Joseph Biden
United States Senate
201 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Senator Biden:

I read just yesterday how you led the efforts to appropriate $50 billion for the treatment and prevention of AIDS and other diseases in foreign countries for the next 5 years.  While I applaud your efforts in that regard as a member of the pancreatic cancer community I feel once again those suffering from this insidious disease and the grieving families of those lost to this disease are getting shortchanged by our federal government with regard to funding for life saving research. Pancreatic cancer currently kills twice as many U.S. residents (33,000) each year than AIDS does.  While sending tens of billions of dollars overseas to fight AIDS is a noble cause it is a national embarrassment when our federal government will only appropriate a little more than $73 million a year on pancreatic cancer research here in the U.S.

Pancreatic cancer is the deadliest cancer known to man and patients once diagnosed have an average life expectancy of 6 months and a five year survival rate of 5% (as a comparison U.S. AIDS patients have a five year survival rate of 94% and an average post diagnosis life span of 24 years).  Pancreatic cancer afflicts over 37,000 U.S. residents every year and causes over 33,000 deaths making it the 4^th leading cause of cancer deaths.  Today approximately U.S. residents were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and over 90 died of this disease.  My own father Louis J. Ciervo, Jr. just succumbed to this disease on July 1, 2008.

Unfortunately the current funding level of $73.3 million a year towards pancreatic cancer research is woefully inadequate.  As a comparison breast cancer (which causes a little more than 40,000 cancer deaths each year) garners $572 million in research dollars alone from the federal government each year, nearly 8 times that of pancreatic cancer, yet the 5 year survival rate is now 89%. 

This level of funding actually contributes to the continuing lethality of this disease.  The 5 year survival rate has only increased 2 points since the 1970s (up to 5% from 3%) and researchers are no closer to finding early detection methods or better treatment options than they were 30 years ago. 

Our organization, Fund A Cure for Pancreatic Cancer, is currently advocating that funding levels be increased to at least $1 billion a year.  While this may seem like a huge increase, it pales in comparison to sending $10 billion a year overseas to fight disease in other countries. 

Without a major investment in research dollars which will bring a large group of talented young medical researchers to this field, I do not hold out much hope for finding a cure for this disease. 

I do not wish to have my children writing to you or the Senator who follows you in 15 years asking what you will do to keep their father’s efforts and their grandfather’s struggle against pancreatic cancer to be left in vain.   

I would ask if we could set up a time and day to meet so I could work with you and your staff on this very important issue.  If that is not possible I would appreciate meeting with one of your staff members in either your Wilmington, DE or Washington offices.

Sincerely,
 

Robert L. Ciervo, Ph.D., Founder and Chairman
Fund A Cure for Pancreatic Cancer Research
12 Kuhars Way
Newtown, PA 18940
rob@fundacure.com
215-932-3200
1-800-474-2173 fax

Why $1 Billion?

Fund A Cure - Cure Pancreatic Cancer Now - Email Us