RUSH: Today, as we’ve been telling you all week, is a special edition of Open Line Friday. Today marks the 21st year of our Leukemia-Lymphoma Cure-A-Thon. This is a one-day event where this radio program goes to you, this audience, to help cure the blood cancers. This is our 21st effort. This is our third decade. We’re moving into our third decade of doing this, and every year — if I may talk about you for a moment — you have donated and contributed more than the previous year, even last year. Last year we all started the Cure-A-Thon thinking we’d be lucky to get anything with the economy being what it was.
And you had everybody in tears starting in the first half hour of last year’s program because we were on a pace that, if it held up, was gonna eclipse the previous year, even in the midst of economic circumstances like that. I tell people about this all the time. We do this one day a year but we don’t even go wall-to-wall with it. We have a three-hour program here, and maybe, all told, 45 minutes of the three hours is devoted to fundraising for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of America, the Cure-A-Thon. The amount of money that’s raised is unbelievable. Forty-five minutes, one year.
Now, we’re beginning our third decade of this, and every year you have come through again and again. You have surpassed the previous year with increased generosity. We’ve had recessions, lows, 9/11, other world disasters, and you have never failed to come through for this great cause. It’s just a great example why you are the best radio audience in the world. You have exhibited steady support in this effort, and it’s been matched in dramatic ways by the medical progress made against these killer diseases. You know, in the time we’ve been doing this — 21 years — some of the greatest medical advances have taken place on your watch.
And this year is no exception, and I’m going to be sharing some of those with you intermittently during the program. Let me give you the phone number, by the way. You can always donate online at RushLimbaugh.com. That’s the easiest way to do this but we also have a toll-free number. It’s 877-379-8888, and that number hasn’t changed from year to year. It’s 877-379-8888, or at RushLimbaugh.com. Now, let’s define what we’re up against here. Imagine that are in the doctor’s office and you hear the words leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, blood cancer.
Now, these are not words that anybody wants to hear, especially if it’s your children. But during the three hours of this program today, 45 people will hear those words. It adds up to 137,000 people a year who are told they have one of the blood cancers. In this same three hours, 18 people will die from them. That adds up to more than 54,000 deaths a year. Now, some of you might say, “You’re right, Rush, but for me my life has been touched by a different cancer. There are all kinds of cancers, Rush. Myself, my family, my friend…”
That’s totally understandable. Everybody cannot be generous to every cause, and there are countless medical killers out there. But one of the things that I learned in the process of getting to know the people at the Leukemia-Lymphoma Society and the people that educated me about this is the advances that are made possible in the effort to cure leukemia and lymphoma go way beyond just treating the blood cancers. Since 2000, thirty-nine anti-cancer drugs have been approved by the FDA, and half of them were blood cancer drugs. Five of those now treat non-blood cancers.
So the research dollars donated here and throughout the year elsewhere fund medical research into drugs that treat other cancers, as well as the blood cancers. For example, 14 of these blood cancer therapies are being tested on solid-tumor cancers, including four for breast cancer. Now, the point here is that when you donate to leukemia and lymphoma, your support goes to successful applications that no one could have imagined 21 years ago. It really is stunning to have done this for 20 years, and to just chronicle all of the improvements that have taken place, to be made aware of them and to know that it’s largely due to you.
That’s tingle-up-the-leg kind of stuff. Now, here’s specifically what we are fighting: Leukemia. That’s cancer of the bone marrow and blood. It causes more deaths than any other cancer among children and young adults under 20. One-third of cancer deaths for children are from leukemia, but it kills ten times as many adults. Lymphoma is cancer of the lymph system. Last year, 43,000 people were diagnosed; 260,000 people are at present battling lymphoma in the United-States. Hodgkin’s lymphoma currently affects 154,000 people. Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma affects about half a million people in this country.
Myeloma, that’s cancer of the plasma cells, and 70,000 people today are suffering from it. Now, these numbers are big. They’re daunting. But you have to know that the progress that’s being made against them in no small part comes from your donations. I mentioned before: A big part of the increased survival rate has taken place just in the last 20, 30 years. It used to be, if I may speak bluntly, an automatic death sentence. It isn’t any longer. Survival rates have expanded anywhere from 5 years up to 10 to 15. Leukemia patients in the late seventies, for example, had a five-year survival rate of 36%. Today it’s 55% and climbing.
Children with the most common form of leukemia are up to a long-term survival rate now of 89%. So there are results. Demonstrable success is taking place — and, as I say, it’s because of you. Hodgkin’s lymphoma, long-term survival rates there at the same time went up from 40 to 89%; and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma survival rate went from 48 to 69%. Myeloma, that’s a really tough cancer: Five-year survival rate of 13% in the sixties, and it’s almost tripled to 39% now. That’s a tough one.
Now, the great part of this effort — and why your donations to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society are so important — is because blood cancer drugs and treatments and therapies funded by the Society are providing hope and survival for other cancers and diseases. You remember the drug Gleevec. I remember heralding the development of Gleevec during one of our Cure-A-Thons in the past 20 years. The initial focus of Gleevec was on a really tough form of leukemia called chronic myelogenous leukemia. Survival rates were less than 50%. If diagnosed earlier, the survival rate is now 95% thanks to Gleevec.
But it doesn’t stop there. Gleevec is also approved to treat a rare form of stomach cancer with the acronym GIST, G-I-S-T. The drug is currently being tested for other kinds of malignancies as well. Gleevec also is showing potential to combat Alzheimer’s. What Gleevec does, if I may get just a bit scientific, is it inhibits a protein that is integral to brain-damaged plaque formations in Alzheimer’s. Removing that protein keeps plaque from developing. It so far has worked in mice and a chemical modification is being pursued to make its study safe and possible for humans. It could be a break for 26 million patients.
In just the last couple of years we’ve seen the approval of a drug called Velcade. That’s a drug whose development was funded by the society to treat myeloma. Survival rates used to be less than three years, but in the short history of Velcade the survival rate is now up to ten years and with a better quality of life, all because of your generous support. Velcade is now on trial in other forms of cancer as well. So the blood cancer therapies, folks, are pioneering treatments for other cancers.
Using blood instead of invasive and risky procedures that aren’t feasible for some solid tumors, researchers are able to study primary cancer cells from patients rather than relying on cell lines or animal models which provides a better chance of producing effective diagnostic therapeutic strategies — and in 21 years we’ve witnessed all this. In 21 years we have seen all of this happen, and I remember there’s a lesson to be learned in this: Always ask for what you want. Don’t assume somebody knows what you want. The short version of how we got started with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is in 1988 when this program began it was stand-alone program.
We had affiliates. We still do. At that time, stations owned by ABC (I think there were seven of them in the network) set aside programming on an entire day for the Radiothon. Stations owned by ABC in New York, Detroit, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Now, my program was just beginning and they didn’t come to me and ask me to devote the whole program to it because we were on a whole bunch of stations other than ABC stations but they did say, “If we gave you a special 800 number would you give it out a couple times and expose your audience to what we’re doing — and WABC in New York, which was our flagship would be able to continue to carry your program?”
Mine was the only one they didn’t broom to go wall-to-wall. I said, “Sure. I’d be happy to.” That has to be ’88 or ’89 when this happened, shortly after we began — and it wasn’t long after that that the Radiothon evolved to become almost an exclusive existence here on the EIB Network. It’s been a godsend for so many people. It has been a great opportunity for all of us here at the EIB Network to be involved. We’ve gotten to know the people who work at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Every one of them has been touched personally by one of these diseases, either themselves or their family.
What I call the “pass-through,” your donation pass-through amount is amazing. There’s not a lot of overhead here like there are in some charities. So we’re off and running — and I never sit out. I’m not like one of these TV telethon hosts that says, “I’m donating my time. Now, you should appreciate that.” I never ask people to do what we don’t do. I mean, I’m not going to sit here and ask you to contribute financially to this if I don’t. So I do. I always get nervous every year by announcing how much, and there’s Snerdley in there, “No, no, no! Don’t get nervous.”
My parents always said, “There’s no class to do that kind of thing,” but other people say, “No, no, no. It will help spur things along.” So I’ll think about it. I gotta go to a break here pretty soon, but we do have premiums again as every year: A $75 donation will get you a commemorative Rush Limbaugh T-shirt, one-size-fits-all. It has the three-color EIB logo specially made for this occasion. A $100 donation or more will qualify you for the same commemorative T-shirt along with a golf hat. A donation of $350 or more brings a custom-sized El Rushbo golf shirt and hat. The shirt this year is a rusty orange with a matching EIB logo on the breast.
My signature’s on the sleeve. The women think that is very tasteful, by the way: The signature on the sleeve rather than prominently there on the breast (which I can understand). It’s 100% polyester, micro-knit construction, ultra-cool technology, keeps you dry even on the hottest days; and you can order that in sizes small, medium, larger, extra large, and XX. They’re all available and you can see ’em at RushLimbaugh.com when you log on to donate and of course the phone number is 877-379-8888.
We have a lot to do on the program today starting our third decade here trying to cure the blood cancers. Donald Trump will be here at the top of the next hour, plus… (interruption) No, I’m not gonna do that. Hit Trump up for a donation? No, I’m not gonna hit Trump up! What do you…? (interruption)
Look, they’re about to get the bear out of there in the tree. Gee, I hope the bear appreciates human beings after this and never, ever once attacks one. No, I’m not gonna hit Trump up! What do you think? No way. We’re gonna talk about Trump’s presidential aspirations and I’ve got some questions for him based on things I’ve heard him say since the last time he was here. So we have a lot to do here today, folks. It’s a great mood we’re in and you can join it at RushLimbaugh.com to cure the blood cancers.
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RUSH: I spoke with Kathryn about this. We have a philosophy when it comes to charitable donations, particularly this one, and that is we hope to raise even more money every year than the previous year — and we have. Folks, you need to know that people give me credit for this, and it’s really due to you. I could sit here and I could beg and I could implore and I can try to inspire and I can try to motivate and all that, but at the end of the process here it’s you who log on and donate. It’s you who pick up the phone and call. This audience is so massive, and our audience rate growth is through the roof, too.
I always say every year, “If everybody in the audience just gave a dollar, we would set charitable donation records around the world. If everybody just gave a dollar,” and we really do illustrate here the volume concept. It doesn’t take a lot as long as a lot of individuals are involved, and I expect during the course of the program I’ll have several people call or e-mail with challenges and this kind of thing. But here’s what I’m gonna do. As I say, I always try to get this ball rolling and started, but not ask you to do things that I wouldn’t do — even when it comes to donating money — and I always try to give a little bit more than I did the previous year.
So we’re gonna start, Kathryn and I will start with $500,000. That will be our donation this year to get things started here, and then we’ll start adding up from that point. I’m sure a half an hour into this we may already be at that level anyway from the grand total so far from all of you in the audience.
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RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, a lot of cancers out there. There’s breast cancer; there’s prostate cancer. Any number of them. We deal with the blood cancers one day a year here at the EIB Network: Leukemia and lymphoma. Leukemia: Cancer of the bone marrow and the blood that causes more deaths than any other cancer among children and young adults under 20. One-third of cancer deaths for children are from leukemia and the disease kills ten times as many adults. Lymphoma is a cancer of the lymph system, and 43,000 people diagnosed. As we speak 260,000 people are battling it. Hodgkin’s lymphoma affects 154,000 people today in our country.
Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma affects almost half a million people. There are a lot of cancers out there. Some cancers are more politically correct than others, as you know. We deal with the blood cancers. The research into curing the blood cancers find its way into treatment for many of the other cancers, as I detailed so artfully and so well in the first half hour of the program. All of that’s made possible by you. It’s your money. Your money counts. Your dollars actually do count. The success is quantifiable. We’re able to report advances every year in this, our 21st year. Myeloma, cancer of the plasma cells: 70,000 people today have it.
These are daunting numbers, but the progress that’s been made against them is because of your donations to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. A big part of the increased survival rate has taken place just the last 20 or 30 years. It’s not a coincidence that we have been involved for 21 years, and that makes you involved. Leukemia patients in the late seventies, for example — just 30 years ago — had a five-year survival rate of 36%. That means 36% of those diagnosed might survive five years. Today, that 36% is 55%. Children with the most common form of leukemia are up now to a long-term survival rate of 89%, just stunning success, stunning advancements are taking place, and it’s a thrill to be able to tell you about them each year that we get together.
To the phones to Landenberg, Pennsylvania. Hi, Kevin. Great to have you on Open Line Friday. Welcome.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I wanted to thank you and your audience for all they’ve done for the last 20, what, 21 years?
RUSH: Twenty-one years.
CALLER: Yep. My daughter, my three-year-old daughter took what’s hopefully her last dose of chemo two weeks ago today.
RUSH: Wow, congratulations. Well, I hope you’re right.
CALLER: Yes! (laughs) So do we. It’s been a long road for her and — well, for everybody, but it’s a scary place to be, and what you guys have done has really improved as you were saying.
RUSH: What was she diagnosed with?
CALLER: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, ALL. They told us she had that.
RUSH: What were her symptoms? How did you know something was wrong?
CALLER: Well, she started off with just what we thought was a leg injury. She started limping and multiple trips to the doctor and then she stopped walking ’cause of the pain in her legs, and then when she started getting the fevers without any other symptoms, they sent her for blood work and x-rays.
RUSH: How long did all this take, from the first time you noticed the limp until it took her to the doctors?
CALLER: I’d say within about a month, month and a half at the most.
RUSH: I don’t have kids, and I can’t imagine what it’s like. You’ve got a limp, you’ve got pain. Were you expecting to hear leukemia when you took her in?
CALLER: No. Not until the day that we took her for the blood work. When she got the x-rays we noticed a little bruise on her back just from laying on the x-ray table.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And I had in the back of my mind a suspicion at that moment and it was later that day we got the call from the doctor with the blood test results to rush her to the ER and he let us know that that we’re likely looking at leukemia. So…
RUSH: So the last chemo treatment has just happened?
CALLER: Yes, two weeks ago today, April 1st.
RUSH: The prognosis is good, then?
CALLER: Yes. Yep, it is. They thought she may have relapsed in her central nervous system back just a couple weeks before Christmas, and so they’ve been doing spinal taps monthly to watch, but it’s been clean since.
RUSH: I got 30 seconds. Have you told her? Does she know what’s happened to her? She’s three years old?
CALLER: No, she doesn’t understand. When it happened she was 18 months old when it started. So she doesn’t really understand it. Her older brother has an idea, but she doesn’t. She just knows she has to go to the doctor all the time.
RUSH: Well, we’re praying for you. Thanks for the call, and God bless.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush.
RUSH: You bet. It’s things like that, circumstances like that. It’s people you never meet, people you’ll never know — or in many cases people you do know, or in your own family. So here we are, curing leukemia and lymphoma. This is our 21st year today at the EIB Network. 877-379-8888 is the number, or RushLimbaugh.com.
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RUSH: You know, when you know somebody or you listen to somebody who’s faced one of these blood cancers talk about it, you’ll never think of these numbers as just statistics again. Our last caller, what would have happened to his daughter 21 years ago, I wonder? What would have been her diagnosis or her prognosis 21 years ago?
Donald Trump’s coming up on the other side of your local news, whatever else they do there. Back before you know it as our Cure-A-Thon continues.
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RUSH: This is the final hour that we have for our Cure-A-Thon today to do everything that we all can to advance the research that will hopefully ultimately provide cures for the blood cancers. This is our 21st Cure-A-Thon, and it spans three decades now. I have something in common with my buddy George Brett. George Brett, I think, is the only Major League player to win the batting title over three different decades — in the Seventies, the Eighties, and the Nineties — and, of course, I’m the only guy to have done a leukemia Cure-A-Thon that spanned three decades. Very, very cool. Here’s our premium list, and you can see these at RushLimbaugh.com. They’re incentive levels for your donation: A $75 donation gets you a commemorative Rush Limbaugh T-shirt. It’s one-size-fits-all.
I know you’re saying, “Well, if my waist is 44 you mean it fits somebody with a 34?” Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don’t know, frankly, if it fits a 44. But I do know that it stretches and it’s got a three-color EIB logo especially made for this occasion. A $100 donation or more qualifies you for the same T-shirt along with a golf hat, an El Rushbo golf hat. For $350 or more, a custom-sized Rush Limbaugh golf shirt and hat. It’s an orange shirt, and it’s available in sizes all the way up from small to XX. It is ultracool technology, the ClimaCool stuff. If you play golf on hot days, that stuff is wonderful. What are we doing here? We are donating to research leading to the cure for the blood cancers.
Now, I haven’t mentioned this since the first hour. But I think it’s important that all of you know that I don’t sit here and say, “Donate, donate,” and then tell everybody else, “Well, yeah, I’m donating my time.” That’s easy. I would be here anyway, so it’s no effort to donate my time. Plus I never really feel good asking you to do something like this that I don’t do myself. So I upped it. Kathryn and I, we talked about it. I upped my donation this year from last year by $100,000, so our total commitment is $500,000. Then Mr. Trump threw in $100,000 at the top of the second hour. By the way, we do not count those amounts.
Well, we’ll count Trump’s but we don’t count my amount in the overall total. It gets added to it later but the numbers I’m reporting to you are strictly your donations. It wouldn’t be quite fair to lump mine in there and then take a running tally of whether we are ahead or behind. I got a note from somebody asking me, a subscriber to RushLimbaugh.com, “Could you describe for me how it feels to be able to do that?” meaning contribute $500,000 to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I can try to describe it. It’s pretty similar to the way I feel whenever I do something like it. It’s a blessing.
It’s a… I don’t know. I use this word and people told me they don’t understand it, but it’s humbling to me. I remember they threw a book party for me at the 21 Club, my first book, and some editor at TIME Magazine came over, and asked, “How do you feel that your book is #1 on the New York Times list?” I said, “I’m kind of humbled by it,” and he could not understand. “What do you mean humbled by it?” I said, “Well, I’m kind of in awe. I’m very appreciative of the fact that something I’ve written is on the top of the list.” This guy thought that I would feel cocky, arrogant, confident, all that kind of stuff.
To me it was just a bit… Maybe humbling isn’t the right word but it’s the closest I can get to it, the ability to be able to help people. I remember my mother perhaps put it best. When I started earning what I call real money, she said, “You know, I would just give it all away, if I earned the kind of money you do. I would just give it away to people.” That was what she told me. I said, “Mom, it’s easy to do, when you’re talking about other people’s,” but that’s what would make her happy. Whatever she needed (which was not much) and then giving it away, that’s what would make her happy — and there is an incredible amount of happiness at the ability to be able to do it. The realization how unique it is.
You know, we have people who are donating five bucks, and it all adds up, and it goes to the same place. I don’t take anybody’s contribution for granted — mine, yours, or anybody else’s — ’cause it all is going to be totaled at the end of the day, and it’s gonna end up being more than it was last year. Whether you count mine and Kathryn’s or not, you are going to continue to set records. You do each and every year and it doesn’t matter we’ve got wars going on, pestilence, pretenders in the White House, bad economic circumstances or what have you. You continue to awe everybody involved here with the efforts that you make.
What are we talking about? We’re talking about leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s and Hodgkin’s lymphoma, myeloma. Leukemia patients, for example, in the late 1970s had a five-year survival rate of 36%, and today — simply because of research — that five-year survival rate from the time you’re told you have the disease is now 55% and climbing. Children who have the most common form of leukemia are now up to a long-term survival rate of 89%. That’s just great. It wasn’t 89% twenty-one years ago when we started. Now, myeloma, that’s a tough cancer. Really tough. They had five-year survival rates of 13% in the sixties. It wasn’t good when you were diagnosed with myeloma. Now that has tripled. The five-year survival rate is 39%.
All of these survival rates are ratcheting upwards, and they are improving, and it’s all because of the money people like you donate to the cause — and, again, everybody here is a volunteer, and they’ve been here since the beginning, at least for me. I’ve done this for 21 years with the same people. They’ve all been personally affected by it, one way or the other. Every day of the year you call ’em, they’re there. They don’t just come together this day. They’re year-round people working on this — and it’s a volunteer organization. The largest voluntary organization of its kind in the country is the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of America.
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RUSH: We get feverish reports in the final hour, and we’re way ahead. Every year — this last year and this year particularly — I thought, “No way we can break a record because only 45% of the country’s working, for crying out loud!” I mean the employment rate is the unemployment rate; the gasoline price is the gasoline price. I thought there’s no way that we’re going to be able to break it. I told the leukemia people, I said, “Look, we’ve got our fingers crossed here. We’re grateful for whatever comes in, but we’ve gotta temper our expectations here,” and we’re blown away by this. Every year it continues, that we improve over the last. It’s all because of you. There has never been, in modern media — I’m confident in saying there has never been — a program where the host and the audience have such a familial (not familiar, family type, familial-type) bond. It’s just wonderful. It absolutely is. Let’s see.
Here’s Molly in Boston. Molly, glad you waited. You’re up on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. It’s an honor to speak with you.
RUSH: Thank you very much.
CALLER: I’m a bit nervous. (giggles)
RUSH: Nah, you don’t need to be at all.
CALLER: I know that I just want to say I made my donation this year like I do every year, and I’m a great believer in your fundraiser —
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: — being a leukemia survivor myself. I can’t match Mr. Trump’s level, but I do what I can.
RUSH: It all counts at the end.
CALLER: Yeah, I know.
RUSH: It all adds up into one giant sum. Trump couldn’t match mine, you know, so…
CALLER: That’s true.
RUSH: Somebody always has more.
CALLER: That’s true.
RUSH: I just wanted to say that I feel that I was diagnosed five years ago with leukemia, and if I were diagnosed under Obamacare, I don’t really think I would be alive.
RUSH: That is… You really have that thought go through your mind?
CALLER: I really do because —
RUSH: That’s scary.
CALLER: — you know, I was diagnosed then as a 58-year-old. They would say I was a nonproductive grandmother, and I don’t think I would —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — have gotten near the care that I got —
RUSH: You might not have. No. Sadly, with Obamacare, that’s a genuine concern, you know, whether you’d be rationed out of treatment.
CALLER: Yeah. I feel I would have been.
RUSH: Now, what you said at the beginning of your call. You said you’re a leukemia survivor?
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: Meaning what? Are you in remission?
CALLER: Meaning I was diagnosed five years ago.
RUSH: And you’re in remission now?
CALLER: I’m in remission now, yes.
RUSH: Well, that is great.
CALLER: I still go in and get regular checkups and blood work, and everything so far is going good.
RUSH: I’m sure. How do you feel?
CALLER: I feel good. (laughs) I’m glad to be alive, and thankful for the fantastic care I got.
RUSH: I’m glad you called. I really am. And you were great. You didn’t sound nervous in the slightest.
CALLER: Well, I am. (laughs)
RUSH: No, no. No, no, no. You don’t sound it. Molly in Boston. I appreciate it very much.
CALLER: Thanks.
RUSH: 877-379-8888. That’s all it took. Really the phone donations are running less than half what we had last year, less than half. I figure it’s just more and more people using the Internet, phone’s becoming an antique instrument, but the phone has been picking up.
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RUSH: I just checked some e-mails during the bottom-of-the-hour break, and there were a couple of e-mails from people who were apologizing about the amount of their donations to our Cure-A-Thon. One guy said, “I can’t give any more than $10 this year.” Another one said, “I can’t do any more than five,” and there are probably a lot of them in there like that. If everybody in this audience just gave $1, we’d set a record that couldn’t be broken. If everybody just gave a dollar. If you’re in your car or if you are wherever you’re listening, if you just stopped and went to RushLimbaugh.com, got your credit card out, and put $1 on it? If everybody did that? Folks, if 30% of the audience did that, it would be a record fundraiser for anything this year.
In these economic times that’s what I was saying a moment ago, I was prepared for the total to be down this year simply because the price of gasoline is up to almost 4-1/2 bucks most places. Only 45% of the people in the country are working. For a lot of people, this is not what you would call the good times. If you can give $5 or $10, whatever it is, I don’t think you should ever — in fact, I don’t want you to — be embarrassed over that. If you’re giving $5 or $10, you know, it probably means you really can’t even afford that. That’s what we all understand. You see a $5 donation and it tugs at your heartstrings. It does mine.
When I see somebody donating $5 or $10, it actually tells me that they may not even really have that, or that coming up with that in these economic times is really hard — and I can tell you that the people that we all work with here at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society don’t care. A dollar here, $5, $10. You know, we have these amounts of $75, $100, and $350 and premiums to offer. Those are, you know, incentive premiums and so forth. But nobody here as any expectations, and nobody’s making any judgments on what amounts people donate in any way, because it all adds up. It doesn’t matter if you send 10 and somebody else sends in a hundred. It’s $110 at the end of the day. I really can’t tell you how much it’s all appreciated.
We’ve been through today how much it matters.
The research in defining cures for blood cancer ends up finding treatment for other solid tumor cancers, other types of cancers that are a bonus. They weren’t even looking, for example, to find some of the treatments that they found. It’s all a bonus. So the overall effort here goes way beyond just the blood cancers, the money and the research to find a cure, survivability rates going up. It’s like anything else that involves science and medicine: Costs continue to go up for everybody involved in this, except for the people who actually work at the Society. They are full-fledged, year-round, fulltime volunteers. So we do this once every year and we raise what we raise. Everybody involved is appreciative and happy starting with me and everybody at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of America. But really, five or ten bucks or even less, please don’t feel badly about that. It’s appreciated as much as anybody else’s donation is. It really is.
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