I just watched an ad on television about National Pet Cancer Month. A pet food company is pushing for donations to find a cure for “this horrible disease.” They plan to raise $1 million this month and have already raised $250,000.

I won’t argue that cancer in dogs, cats, and other creatures is not tragic. But I will risk the wrath of PETA and pet lovers by pointing out that I have been working for a year and a half to raise money and awareness about NET. Over that time period, I have personally helped raise $28,000. Last year, all the efforts of all the foundations involved in raising money for NET research totaled, at most, $4 million.

I’m sure that pet food company will raise more than their $1 million goal. I am sure that over the next 12 months we will spend two or three times–at a minimum–more on cancer in pets than we will on NET and CS in humans.

Don’t misunderstand me. I love dogs. I like cats. My sisters had hamsters and birds and I enjoyed teaching the parakeets to talk and watching the rodents churn on their treadmills. Jane lost her dog to cancer as a young woman. I don’t wish ill on any living thing.

But it makes me angry to learn that we will likely spend more on solving cancer in animals than we will on the cancer that killed my wife. It makes me angry that in a single month we will raise significantly more to cure cancer in pets than all the efforts put in by the 950 Greater Fall River Relay for Life participants combined to cure cancer in humans over the course of this entire year–and far more than all my efforts to fund research into NET and CS over the last 17 months.

I have a hard time with the inequities in funding for human cancers. I don’t understand why breast cancer earns so much more research money than the next two or three cancers combined despite its smaller incidence than two of those cancers. I understand the politics of it and the marketing of it well enough. But I do not understand the morality of it. Similarly, I understand the politics and marketing behind the amounts spent on prostate cancer, but not the morality of it.

And as I have said before, I think research into breast cancer and prostate cancer and all the big-name cancers is important. My sister and sister-in-law would no longer be with us without the research we have done into breast cancer–and I am glad to have them both still with us on this side of the grass.

But I love my wife more than I can ever love either of those two women. And I love her more than I can love any cat or any dog–or any animal.

You can hate me for that. You can hate me for saying I would rather see money spent on unraveling the mystery of NET than on animal cancers. And part of me will understand why you feel that way.

But my wife’s life mattered more to me than anything else ever will.