The skinny years, with Whiskers
Guildford is a small city in southeast England. If you draw a line due west from Dorking,
another WSW from Leatherhead, and a third SE from Worplesdon they will cross
very near Guilford. Got that? If not, it is a few dozen miles SW of
London. So why should you care?
Well, actually you don’t need to care at all. All you need to know is that Guildford is the
home of the University of Surrey, and at the University of Surrey they do
important cancer research, as explained by the following “media release”.
This work at U. Surrey is funded by a private foundation
called Worldwide Cancer Research, which seems to be a Marsha Rivkin Center writ
large; last year they awarded 9 million British pounds to “pioneering research
around the world”. Sounds like my kind
of place.
Linda suffered from cold sores much of her life. As most of you know, cold sores are caused by
a virus, the “herpes simplex virus (HSV), which apparently gets into you and
then settles down for life. It seems to
be the case that Professor Gillian Elliot of U. Surrey has engineered the HSV
virus to attack ovarian cancer cells, while leaving normal cells alone. She is working on further engineering them to
spread rapidly throughout the body. I am
struggling to subdue my optimism.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a woman working SE of
Worplesdon found a way to cure ovarian cancer?
Worldwide Cancer Research turns out to be the largest independent (non-governmental) cancer-research funding organization in the world. They are based in St. Andrews, Scotland, but fund projects all over the world. If they were concerned mainly with ovarian cancer I would consider donating my yearly pittance to them, rather than Fred Hutch. But they aren't. Here is their web site:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.worldwidecancerresearch.org/