“…everybody seems to have given up hope of trying. I haven’t. It isn’t easy and it isn’t supposed to be, but I’m
accomplishing something. How many people give up a lot to do something good. I’m sure we would have ound a cure for cancer 20 years ago if we had really tried.” Terry Fox 1980.
Terry Fox became famous for the Marathon of Hope, a cross-Canada run to raise money for cancer research, which Fox ran with one prosthetic leg. Born July 28, 1958 and, in his teenage years, won numerous medals in diving and swimming competitions. In 1977, after feeling pain in his right knee, he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma. Very often the cancer starts at the knee, then works its way up into the muscles and tendons.
At the time, the only way to treat his condition was to amputate his right leg several inches above the knee. Three years after losing his leg, the young athlete decided to run from coast to coast in order to raise money for cancer research.
However, Fox was unable to complete his run, as his bone cancer had metastasized to his lungs. X-rays revealed that Fox’s right lung had a lump the size of a golf ball and his left lung had another lump the size of a lemon. He was forced to stop the run on September 1, 1980, after 143 days. He had run 5,373 km or 3,339 miles (roughly 23.3 miles per day).
Eight days after Terry Fox was forced to stop, the CTV television network organized a nationwide telethon in hopes of raising additional funds for the cause of cancer research; it proved so successful that $10.5 million was raised that day. The campaigns were so successful that by February 1981, $24.17 million had been raised.(iii)
In June 1981, Fox developed pneumonia, and on June 27, he went into a coma. He died on the 28th; a year after his legendary run, and exactly one month before his twenty-third birthday.
That was nearly 30 years ago.
How are we faring nowadays in the marathon against cancer?
Has anyone heeded Terry Fox’s words and really tried to find a cure? Have raised funds resulting from his heroic effort and other subsequent fund raising activities proved fruitful, or have they merely been used to proliferate a ‘cancer industry’?......
