To whom it may concern:
Please don’t refer to the cancer that killed Aretha Franklin as pancreatic cancer. According to her publicist she died of “pancreatic cancer of the neuroendocrine kind.” That form of cancer is more properly referred to as pancreatic NET or pNET. It is a very different type of cancer than the pancreatic cancer most people know about. Among other differences, pNET can create an over-supply of any of the pancreatic enzymes, with dire digestive consequences.
Two of the top doctors in this field are in the Boston area. Dr. Jennifer Chan is the Director of the Program for Neuroendocrine and Carcinoid Tumors at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Matthew Kulke, the former head of that program, is now the assistant director of the oncology program at the Boston Medical Center. I suggest you talk to one or both of them.
(There are many other doctors and researchers I could name. The initial audience for this was Boston area media. Feel free, if you share this in other areas, to provide more local experts.)
I lost my wife to another form of NET cancer in 2010. I now chair a small foundation focussed on raising awareness and research funding for all forms of NET cancer. I also currently chair 3-in-3:The Campaign to Cure NET Cancer, which is raising $3 million over three years to fund research at Dana-Farber into NET cancer.
NET cancer is now the second most prevalent form of gastrointestinal cancer in the US in terms of the number of diagnosed patients living with the disease. Only colon cancer has more living patients.
Thank you,
Harry Proudfoot
Chairperson, Walking with Jane, Inc.
Chairperson, 3-in-3: The Campaign to Cure NET Cancer
Feel free to use this letter to contact your own local news media. And feel free to change the experts to ones in your area, as well as your connection to the disease.
—Harry Proudfoot
