I have chosen the group from the St Jude Cancer Research Hospital. They are the people that continued to pursue liberty and happiness for years. They believe every child deserves a chance for happiness and has the right to medical care. I truly believe that as scientist continues to do more research, they will find cures for the catastrophic diseases of childhood. The hospital’s main concern is the health of children with cancer, but eventually they will advance to help everyone else. Perhaps the most nationally recognized devotee of Saint Jude during the last half of the 20th century was Danny Thomas.
St Jude’s was founded by Danny Thomas who at the time was a struggling actor with a wife and three children. He was not making too much money but only $45 a week to take care of his family. As he remember the power of faith, one day he entered a church and he began making short prayers to Saint Jude, asking for the saint’s intercession to show him the way in life. He prayed for strength to succeed in his profession and promised he would do something big in Jude’s name if he managed to gain a measure of economic security. Thomas kept his promise in which this is how the hospital came to be established.
Danny Thomas impacted the world by living the dream that “no child should die in the dawn of life. ” He founded St. Jude’s on February 4, 1962 where they had an annual budget of $1 million, 125 employees, and focused on pediatric cancer and acute lymphocytic leukemia (4% cure rate). With hard work they have now expanded to 3400 employees, continued focus on pediatric cancer and its complications, translational trials – “Bench to Bedside” research, gene therapy research, international outreach and an annual budget of more than $400 million.
The mission of St. Jude’s and the IOP which is the International Outreach Program is to is to treat the terminal illnesses of children including diseases such as Cancer, Sickle Cell Disease, brain tumors, HIV and AIDS, and many others. Treatments of Cancer vary from case to case. Some treatments involve chemotherapy; which is the treatment of cancer with drugs that can destroy cancer cells, along with the healthy non-cancer cells. Sometimes Chemotherapy causes the patients hair to fall out.
Some of the impact they have is continued focus on pediatric cancer, AIDS research, research on acute lymphocytic leukemia (80% cure rate), with an annual budget of $100 million and a Congressional Gold Medal and Nobel Prize. (St Jude, 2010) Their outreach program is wonderful with the right attitude and goal. They are beginning to look at cancer at a cellular level to try and find how it works and what might trigger it. With the mutations this disease goes through it can be hard to treat. St Jude’s is ready for that challenge.
They not only impact us in the US, but they get together with people around the world to help find a cure for this international problem. Cancer does not just affect one rare, religion, sex – it can affect anyone. “An international team led by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital’ scientist has developed a new approach that uses genomic information from different species to understand the biology that drives the formation of these different cancer subtypes. ” (PRNewswire, 2010) Being able to bring professionals from around the world together for a common goal is a spectacular achievement.
The drive to find a cure will never die as when scientist, researchers and doctors retire a new generation will pick up the pieces and keep it going. With new technology and a new perspective always coming into the fold it will only lead them closer to a cure. We find when things start to slow down, and you feel like you have hit a brick wall, a new set of eyes and ideas seem to get you over that hump. I truly believe I will see a cure in my life time, or in the life of my children, but once that is done they will take on a new campaign that needs a hero to fight it. We will always have a need for advances in the medical field.
With every new disease or sickness that comes along in the future, a new revolution will have a great impact to start research to find a new cure. Happiness can be achieved even when you are ill. “History is filled with remarkable examples of how good lives managed to overcome horrible barriers. ” (Janaro, Altshuler, 2010) I think that this is one of them. The core of its meaning is that we all deserve to be happy and have the best lives we can. It takes courageous people to fight for that, no matter what the cost, from being killed for your cause, or even endless preaching of non-violence like Gandhi.
(Janaro, Altshuler, 2010) It is all for the greater good and healthy, happier children. Children are dying every day from different forms of cancer. It is our duty to give these children medical attention and the best life we can until a cure is found. The St Jude Cancer Research Hospital is making an impact in the twenty-first century and beyond. Some of those impacts will be good and we will feel the ripple effects for generations whose goal it is to help people and find a cure for cancer. This in itself is a huge hurdle to overcome.