Today's letters: America needs to step in & Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month is upon us
When I see men being beheaded and burned alive and women and children being gassed and struggling to breath and thousands of people trying to escape their country to simply stay alive, I cannot understand why our government has not sent our military into these countries to stop it. We know where they are and we know who they are and we have the capability to stop it.
We are told that our country is tired of war and that we cannot invade a sovereign nation and that this is a religious issue.
Is there really any reason in the world to allow this to continue? Have we become so cold and indifferent to human suffering that we stand by and do noting?
How can we worry about diplomacy or sovereignty while people are being butchered in the name of religion?
Are not all of these helpless men women and children worth going too war for? Is there really any choice?
We struggle in our own neighborhoods to maintain justice and insist that all lives matter, but we have a system that allows us to defend our selves, these people being tortured and killed have no defender, they have no one to save them. We have the means to save them how can we not just do it? And worry about the judgment later.
I believe that God will judge our nation harshly if we do nothing. Don't we want to once again be the nation that helps the helpless No matter what the rest of the world thinks?
Ed Stout
Ewing
November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, and about 3,800 people nationwide will be diagnosed with the disease in the next 30 days. Sadly, only about 950 of them will still be alive a year from now.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer, claiming nearly 40,000 lives in the United States annually. It's the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States and is projected to become the second by 2020. The five-year survival rate is just 6 percent.
Pancreatic cancer is often called the "silent killer" because there's no reliable screening test for the disease. Its elusive symptoms - often no more than a pain that develops in the stomach or back - usually aren't apparent until the disease has spread.
Adding to the threat is the relative lack of awareness about pancreatic cancer. That's why this month is so important. We must know this terrible disease in order to fight it. And to fight it, we need increased support and research funding for treatments and early screening.
My husband Steve Kelly, the inspiration for our 501(c)(3) nonprofit Kelly's Heroes, was just 53 when he was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. He died 22 months later. People said he was a medical "success story," having survived nearly two years with pancreatic cancer. As grateful as we are for those 22 months, and as proud as we are of Steve's grit through two clinical trials, we aren't willing to accept 22 months as success.
Purple is the color for pancreatic cancer, and "wage hope" is our mantra. Please join us in raising awareness and helping us redefine success against this terrible disease.
Kerry Kelly
East Windsor
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