The folks at NOVA Dog Magazine have begun an 18 hour Blogathon to bring awareness to canine cancer and benefitting 2 Million Dogs. Thanks to Janelle, the driving force behind this & to the contributing bloggers - Chicks Love Beer and our Beloved Blogging Bob who is finally BACK!!!
Join the fun and if you make a donation you'll have a chance to win an Amazon Kindle - how cool is that?
This is the Blog I submitted....
That cancer has become the greatest scourge ever known is without any doubt, our own damn doing. Not so long ago 4 out of every 5 men smoked and almost just as many women.
Over the past century we’ve engineered and manufactured thousands of industrial chemicals, products, and materials that were either directly sold to consumers or otherwise introduced into our society without their full impact on our health and environment ever studied. The byproducts and waste were then discarded into landfills and even dumped into our water supply wreaking havoc on our ecological systems and forever corrupting our gene pool perhaps making cancer the inheritable disease it is today.
It should be of no surprise then that for the first time in history the World Health Organization recently revealed that cancer is now the number one cause of death worldwide beating out all other diseases. In the United States alone one out of every 3 females and one out of every two males will develop cancer in their lifetime. That’s 33% and 50% respectively in case you have a hard time with math like me. Has there ever been a pandemic so far reaching, so catastrophic throughout our recorded history?
And increasingly it is affecting our companion animals. It’s guesstimated that anywhere from 2 to 6 million new cases of cancer naturally occur every year in cats and dogs. Some breeds are harder hit than others. At least half of all Golden Retrievers, it is believed, will die from cancer.
I didn’t know all of this almost three years ago when my two dogs, Hudson and Murphy, and I decided to walk from Austin TX to Boston MA for cancer. Our story started out simple enough; my mother is a breast cancer survivor and my family has been touched by the disease but it wasn’t until my Great Pyrenees, Malcolm, died from metastatic osteosarcoma that cancer became my mission.
I just wanted to walk across the country and share Malcolm’s story and let people know that dogs, too, get cancer. But as I talked to more and more oncologists and scientists I learned that there isn’t a lot, if any, difference. That’s not surprising since dogs drink the same water we do, breathe the same air, and are exposed to the same environmental toxins.
At the tail end of our 2,300 mile walk we formed a foundation devoted to raising awareness, educating, and funding research about the common link between cancer in people and pets and area of science known as comparative oncology.
That foundation, 2 Million Dogs, has an ambitious nationwide effort that was launched this year to have 2 million dogs walk simultaneously throughout the country for cancer. On November 7th 2010 our first such event was held in 12 cities and 2011 will at least double that.
Please join us in our efforts to eradicate cancer in companion pets and people, too. Thank you and… Puppy up!
Hudson, Murphy, & Luke
Join the fun and if you make a donation you'll have a chance to win an Amazon Kindle - how cool is that?
This is the Blog I submitted....
That cancer has become the greatest scourge ever known is without any doubt, our own damn doing. Not so long ago 4 out of every 5 men smoked and almost just as many women.
Over the past century we’ve engineered and manufactured thousands of industrial chemicals, products, and materials that were either directly sold to consumers or otherwise introduced into our society without their full impact on our health and environment ever studied. The byproducts and waste were then discarded into landfills and even dumped into our water supply wreaking havoc on our ecological systems and forever corrupting our gene pool perhaps making cancer the inheritable disease it is today.
It should be of no surprise then that for the first time in history the World Health Organization recently revealed that cancer is now the number one cause of death worldwide beating out all other diseases. In the United States alone one out of every 3 females and one out of every two males will develop cancer in their lifetime. That’s 33% and 50% respectively in case you have a hard time with math like me. Has there ever been a pandemic so far reaching, so catastrophic throughout our recorded history?
And increasingly it is affecting our companion animals. It’s guesstimated that anywhere from 2 to 6 million new cases of cancer naturally occur every year in cats and dogs. Some breeds are harder hit than others. At least half of all Golden Retrievers, it is believed, will die from cancer.
I didn’t know all of this almost three years ago when my two dogs, Hudson and Murphy, and I decided to walk from Austin TX to Boston MA for cancer. Our story started out simple enough; my mother is a breast cancer survivor and my family has been touched by the disease but it wasn’t until my Great Pyrenees, Malcolm, died from metastatic osteosarcoma that cancer became my mission.
I just wanted to walk across the country and share Malcolm’s story and let people know that dogs, too, get cancer. But as I talked to more and more oncologists and scientists I learned that there isn’t a lot, if any, difference. That’s not surprising since dogs drink the same water we do, breathe the same air, and are exposed to the same environmental toxins.
At the tail end of our 2,300 mile walk we formed a foundation devoted to raising awareness, educating, and funding research about the common link between cancer in people and pets and area of science known as comparative oncology.
That foundation, 2 Million Dogs, has an ambitious nationwide effort that was launched this year to have 2 million dogs walk simultaneously throughout the country for cancer. On November 7th 2010 our first such event was held in 12 cities and 2011 will at least double that.
Please join us in our efforts to eradicate cancer in companion pets and people, too. Thank you and… Puppy up!
Hudson, Murphy, & Luke
