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Maniacs, Malignancy, Medicine

Prostate Cancer Research Institute (PCRI)

The world has gotten smaller, much smaller. Many of us have family scattered around the globe and are part of an interracial, intercultural, interreligious, or interpolitical family. Our ability to reason, to use intellect, and most importantly to combine this with our humanity, sets our life forms apart as distinctive, as elite, as part of the essential formula for humankind. Without such attributes, our world is lost to acts of terror, which leads to a loss of all that is beautiful in nature, in human interactions, and other creative expressions of love.

If we are to overcome threats to life, be it from cancer that erodes the body or from deviant minds twisted overtly malevolent, we must realize that our salvation, as a global people, must derive from human unity. We must bond with each other, embrace our differences of color, creed, and political views, and cherish each other's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Such human unity is our mandate for humanity.

The world must render inoperable perpetrators of all acts of terrorism. However, we must minimize harm to innocent peoples; if we do not, we diminish ourselves with the loss of someone else's mother, father, sister, brother, or child.

To defeat maniacs and malignancy we must bond together, educate one another, support each other, and work in harmony to defeat a common enemy that can attack any of us, without warning, and lead to the end of our life. In both worlds, prevention is the key to eradicating malignancy before it has a chance to take root. If life and happiness are to be preserved, we must have the vision to understand the critical need for prevention, and not to react after the fact. We must mature as global adults by ensuring that the way we make our bed is how we sleep in it.

The inconceivable and monstrous acts of terrorists in our country, and throughout the world, are a screaming wake-up call. We ignored the warnings of earlier terrorist attacks against our brothers and sisters. At a similar level of permissiveness, we also have taken little action to prevent the loss of our loved ones to prostate cancer. Thirty-two thousand lives per year in the U.S. alone—and a conservative estimate of 2,000,000 lives per decade worldwide—are lost. This loss of life, however, is more subtle—it does not come amidst the horror of a plane crashing or a building collapsing, and it does not cut off life abruptly without a chance to say "goodbye" and "I love you." Nevertheless, it is a loss of humankind that diminishes all. How can we ignore this until it touches our life and then expect the world to feel our pain? We must be involved in any and every tragedy in the world as a global family. We enrich our lives when we do this; we diminish ourselves when we hoard our time, our talents or our treasury from the needs of our brothers and sisters.

Now is our time—a call to arms! Not wielding weapons of destruction, but working together to find a cure to eradicate the "cancers" of mankind—those that afflict our body and those that destroy our soul. This is a call to each of us to extend our hearts, our hands, and our lives to help one another. When we are gathered in the name of love, we accomplish miracles. We change the world.

This Article Full Text (PDF) eLetters: Submit a response to this article Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services E-mail this article link to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Reprints/Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Strum, S. B. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Strum, S. B.