Cancer and Corruption

It pains me to hear that a peer and classmate has been diagnosed with a disease I am very familiar with. Ed’s essay and video on hope got me thinking about how many other people must remain optimistic and hopeful about the unfairness of life. I remember being hopeful for my mother who passed when I was 17 after fighting for five years with a disease she did not deserve. It's hard to find hope when something like that happens, it can even make a person lose faith, but what i took form that experience is that i can still be hopeful for other people and fight to make change for others so that they don't have to suffer in the same way. 

I wish our government wasn’t so corrupt that we prioritize profits over the suffering of human beings. A disease such as cancer should have been eradicated a long time ago instead we have created an entire economy revolving around oncology. I believe it is one in three people who will be diagnosed with some form of cancer in their lifetimes, and although this is a scary number, it is even more scary that our government and many other world governments see these numbers and think “wow look at all those people we can make money off of” The sadness and grief i felt for my mother quickly turned into rage and hatred for our country and any pharmaceutical company that controls it. Why do we not prioritize science so that we may find cures to such diseases? Why do we charge tens of thousands of dollars for cancer treatments when much of our country doesn’t even have $700 in the bank for a rainy day? The inhumanity I've seen in our healthcare industry is mortifying. This cruelty is what has inspired me to become more vocal about my opinions and pursue a career in making policies to challenge these corporations who would rather us die than lose their profits. 

We all share sympathy for those with cancer and we all acknowledge that it is something no one should have to experience, and yet so much of our country would still oppose giving free healthcare to those who are already suffering. There is no reason a person should have to go into debt because of medical bills. My father went into the emergency room for an x-ray and some blood tests not too long ago and they had the audacity to send a bill of over $10,000. This type of price gouging is killing people every day, those who refuse to see a doctor because they are scared of the bill, those who can’t afford insulin or other life saving drugs, and people like me who don’t want to have to pay $60 for an emergency inhaler. 

Now this brings me to the opiate crisis we’ve been facing for years. For decades we have just given pills out like candy and treating addicts like criminals. This benefits corporations in two ways: big pharma gets to make money off of prescribing pills people don’t need, then the private prisons get to make money off of the addicts they’ve created, raking in more money with the help of our government. We allow thousands of people to die each year from opiates and for many people they are not even effective at treating pain and only produce feelings of nausea (my mother being an example). And yet we still outlaw marijuana, an effective pain treating medication that also cures nausea, not because it is a dangerous drug, but because it is dangerous to the profits of corporations. 

I still have hope that we can make the changes necessary to save lives and produce a science driven society. This election proved that much of the country is tired of our “war on drugs” and that a majority of us are on board with free healthcare. I urge you all to remain vocal and hopeful about fixing the injustices we face within our own country. Now if we could just get enough scientists and scholars into positions of power...

semester total: 55