War is something that is part of our nature at CNN–war coverage that is. Already, we can feel the steady editorial foot beat toward a major conflict in the Gulf.
Today the British Foreign Secretary accused Iraq of unimaginable human rights abuses and claims that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. I want a weapon of mass destruction - something so powerful and complete that we never have to think about cancer again.
The odds we were given were 60-40% chance of survivability—a mathematical formula that concludes the odds of surviving five years beyond treatment. I am angry tonight, so angry. I wonder if anger can seep in to the soul of our unborn child. One can weigh the crimes against humanity of a dictator like Saddam Hussein. I can sit dispassionately on the anchor desk, reciting facts, statistics. Or consider the odds of surviving in a war zone. But even on a battle field you have control. The odds are so much more in your favor. Even if someone were firing at point blank range with an automatic weapon, the odds are still favorable that he will miss.
Lots of bad shots in the world. Even more important, lots of bad equipment. Russian made ak 47’s that litter the landscape in a warzone will jam or miss-fire.
With cancer, and a rare cancer at that, your odds lie in your own DNA. Science can only project averages. But none of us are average, are we? Each of us is equipped, or ill-equipped to fight off the thousands of abnormal cells that course through our bodies daily—with a crack immune system of white cells and lymph nodes and genetic coding that destroy the killer cells or keep them from multiplying. What quirk in our biology that allows some to live and others to die is still the great mystery. So we pray, We let our faith wash over us and lull us for seconds at a time, to make us believe that we are entitled to the miracle. No one has yet explained the spontaneous remissions—the people who get the cures, though science does not know why.
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