It was once said, “From tragedy, hope is born.” Nothing could resonate more as the truth than if does with children who have cancer. Everyone has a story about how cancer has affected their lives. Me, I lost my mother when I was 4 years old. I lost my sister in 2011 and many of you know the story of how my wife was pregnant with our son Robbie at the same time as two of her close friends. All three kids were born within a couple of months of each other. Our friend Aimee & Kevin’s son, Jackson was diagnosed with cancer shortly after he was born. He only made it to his second birthday. To this day, I don’t know how parents deal with being told, their child has cancer. It was 14 years ago, that I started raising money to fund childhood cancer through the St. Baldrick’s Foundation. I want to explain the important work and advances that this money goes to…
• The survival rate of children in the High-Risk group 3 Medulablastoma has increased from 54% to 73%. This means on average that 20 more kids out of every 100 diagnosed with this subtype of cancer will survive than before!
• With the research funded by St. Baldrick’s and the FDA approval of Kymriah in 2017 as the first gene therapy approved in the U.S., 80% of relapsed childhood leukemia patients, who previously had no hope, have survived.
• Research has increased the survival rate of a form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia from 20% to 70% since 2013! That survival rate was elevated 50% in less than a decade.
• High-Risk Neuroblastomas which was a death sentence a couple of decades ago, now has a 50% survival rate with new immunotherapy called Unituxin, thanks to your donations!
• St. Baldrick’s teamed up with Stand Up To Cancer to form a research Dream Team. They found a method of Car T-cell immunotherapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia that results in complete remission for more than 60% of those patients treated. Once again, just a decade ago, this was close to a death sentence.
• St. Baldrick’s funding has made it possible for more than 123,000 infants, children, teens, and young adults fighting cancer to be treated in more than 330 clinical trials since 2005!
• Most all other cancer patients in North America and beyond are treated on protocols resulting from research supported by St. Baldrick’s funded researchers.
• St. Baldrick's authored the Childhood Cancer STAR Act, and in 2021 alone, this bill garnered a federal increase of $30 million for childhood cancer research. Our efforts to get the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative (CCDI) passed produced another $50 million, all to accelerate discoveries that help kids. That is $80 million more for research in one year — not counting St. Baldrick's grants!
So now you know why I am such a huge supporter of St. Baldrick’s. Because, unlike most charities that spend a large amount on staff and salaries, St. Baldrick’s only spends 8% on administration (accounting, audit, human resources, insurance, etc) because as a rule, it is a volunteer organization. So join us at McMullan’s Irish Pub around 5:30 pm on September 17th for a pint and enjoy the show as they shave my head…and raise money for things like eyebrows, beards, or whatever it takes to raise money to fight childhood cancer!
