I have tried very hard to keep my personal political views off this site. Cancer has no respect for political party or ideology. It attacks independents, Democrats, and Republicans, communists, fascists, socialists, anarchists, and believers in democracy with equal vengeance.

I have also tried very hard to keep my religious beliefs off this site. Cancer has no respect for religious beliefs. It attacks Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Hindus, and even Satanists and Atheists with equal fervor–and with the same results.

Cancer is an equal opportunity destroyer no matter what you believe. It ignores matters of race, ethnicity, politics, gender and sexual orientation. In its eyes, we are all equal. Oh, some cancers may be more frequent in some groups than others, but the bottom line is, we all face cancers. And in the face of that reality, I’d like to believe we can all come together against the common foe regardless of our differences elsewhere.

I have failed in my efforts to avoid politics and religion here the last few days. I talked about religion because I decided that, in the interest of full disclosure, people should know the philosophical leanings of anyone who is trying to get them to take action on a particular issue. I am not interested in anyone’s particular professed religious or philosophical beliefs. The mythos any one of us believes is far less important than the actual actions those stories prompt us to undertake.

If those stories prompt you to beat up women or enslave people of another religion–or even your own–then you and I have little to talk about. Chances are the only time cancer will interest you is when you or one of your children has it. If, on the other hand, your faith prompts you to acts of compassion and true love–caritas, in Latin–then what name you put on your belief system matters not a jot to me: you are my brothers and sisters. Cancer will matter to you whether you have it or not–just as anyone you see who is hurting will matter to you.

I talked about politics yesterday because Sunny’s post brought back to me memories of other folks who faced similar issues in the 1970s and a note I got late last year from an old friend detailing her financial struggles in the face of her own health issues. The reality is that those issues have been with us for a long time–and for largely political reasons we have done nothing to resolve them.

The political reality is that when the federal government begins cutting the budget–which it will have to do whether we raise taxes or not–funding for cancer research is likely going to go under the knife. Some research will not be cut because it would be political suicide to do so: breast cancer, prostate cancer, and probably colon, pancreatic, and lung cancer have that kind of political pull. But those without a major constituency will be subjected to cost-benefit analysis and chopped without mercy.

In 1968, carcinoid cancer was cut from the federal cancer research budget. They signed Jane’s death warrant that day–as well as thousands of others. Jane was 13 then. How many 13-year-olds will we unknowingly condemn to death this time?

Even in this community, politics matters.