This post is a repeat of our home page, the content of which is very important yet is often overlooked. Here the links are kept intact for easy reference. Also, our literature is offered here as well.
PRWeb press release LEAFLET brochure DESCRIPTION of Purpose Did You Know?
“May light and hope one day replace despair and grief at diagnosis for DIPG children and their families.”
Our mission is to improve awareness for DIPG, one of the most devastating pediatric malignancies with virtually no survivors, the urgent need for research, and to support the afflicted. The foundation’s beginnings were inspired by the love and support our local communities of Agua Dulce, Acton, and Santa Clarita, California, from the diagnosis 10/28/2011, of James-William “Jack” Demeter, with Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma, or DIPG. Children’s cancer research is markedly underfunded, brain tumors being the leading cause of cancer-related death in children, and DIPG being responsible for 80% of pediatric brain tumor deaths. Erin
Dr. Charlie Teo, Founder of Cure Brain Cancer Foundation
Griffin, the beautiful girl in this video sadly passed away from DIPG September 2014. Dr. Charlie Teo, internationally renown neurosurgeon, expresses that the lack of funding for research is truly the only barrier to our making progress in treating brain tumors:
WHY IS AWARENESS SO IMPORTANT? Many do not know that cancer is the leading disease-cause of death in children in our country, and that pediatric cancer research is not adequately supported by the national budget for cancer research through the National Cancer Institute, with a meagre 4% going to pediatric cancer research as a whole. There is an uncanny resistance to this discussion in the public arena. DIPG is the perfect example of a pediatric cancer that is marginalized as a “rare” or “orphan” disease, although it is responsible for the majority of pediatric brain tumor deaths annually, brain tumors being the leading cause of cancer-related death in children. What is defined as “research funding” within the pharmaceutical industry is not entirely transparent, either, and subject to change of convenience. There has been no progress in the survival of pediatric brain tumors in over 40 years, according to the National Brain Tumor Society, and the field is urgently in need of support. With regular frequency, children die of brain tumors with virtually nothing being done to research the causes and conditions. While we have developed many life-saving therapies for adults, little is being done, in comparison, for our world’s most precious commodity: our children.
Our happiest accomplishment of 2013 is the “for Jack” DIPG research fund at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and thus our campaign to ‘Count to a Million!’ –continues, as does our desire to see such a research fund at every major children’s research institution neuro-oncology clinic in the US. Please join us in our attempt to be supportive to those families and dear children who are diagnosed with DIPG, in their walk down this road. Jack lived 9 months past his diagnosis date, the median survival time for DIPG. Please consult the “About DIPG” page for more information about this illness.
Donating to Jack’s Angels supports DIPG research at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, programs like Project Angel Box and our community programs and events for children. Donations specified for a purpose will be honored. Currently we have no sponsors and are solely dependent upon community and volunteer support. It costs money for any business to survive; we appreciate support for our organization’s activities. It makes fundraising for research and outreach to the afflicted possible. Thank you for your consideration, and your generosity.
“We were told, ‘…there’s nothing we can do; we don’t know the cause, and we can only provide temporary relief with radiation; no chemotherapies have changed the terminal outcome…’, and yet, no one was taking data from us. No samples, no testing, no forms, no nothing. We got an enormous book from CureSearch of forms, that I think was standard for any child diagnosed at the hospital with some form of cancer, but nothing that addressed the urgent need for research, real research… This is an UNACCEPTABLE REALITY. All of our research hospitals across the country ought to have data programs for the families to have the opportunity to contribute their life history/lifestyle/genetic information; we could be actively looking for the “non-existent” common denominators of DIPG. All research centers ought to have the advanced genetic testing/data-collaboration capability. We have the technology; God knows the doctors would like to be able to do more. And as more and more families suffer from DIPG, it won’t be long before the status quo’s unacceptability is too strong in our collective consciousness to ignore. This is now my personal mission.” –J. Demeter, Jack’s mom
