After Black Friday has passed, the official effort to raise funding for deserving charities on the Internet begins on #givingtuesday December 1st. It may be single digits outside, but nothing can cool my desire to support, in time and donations, the work of the Oral Cancer Foundation. Be it through helping people behind me in the disease process with their questions on OCF’s online support group, working with researchers (both through direct funding and through my position on a National Cancer Institute immuotherapeutics oversight committee) that are making progress in our understanding of not only the disease but important new ways to interrupt a cancer cell’s ability to evade our own immune system, to working on efforts to reach kids before they adopt tobacco as a lifestyle choice through our rodeo outreach program, to helping convince the CDC to allow on label vaccination of young boys against HPV, a virus that will cause over 600,000 new cancers in the world this year including oral/oropharyngeal cancers, to working with politicians that finally passed a landmark bill to allow the FDA more control over tobacco, I give my time and donations to support OCF. I urge my friends to consider that though small compared to some giant multi million dollar charities, OCF is the voice of this disease. Where they see a small incidence cancer seldom worthy of their dollars and time, OCF sees its primary foe. The foundation only makes progress through the support of others who choose to be our partners. This December, when good will hopefully is in all our spirits, I hope you will consider OCF worthy of your support. We are only the vehicle of your benevolence and desire to reduce the impact of this terrible disease, and nothing we accomplish happens without it. http://oralcancerfoundation.org/giving-tuesday/ #givingtuesday #supportocf
