Cancer, Bats and Hunger

That was the subject of three out of four articles of the Boston Globe's Op-Ed page on Monday morning, April 28th.

They were all three connected; at least I could see it today. President Nixon declared the war on cancer in 1971 and pledged 100 million for research. We've since spent 79 billion and cancer is still with us. BUT we are getting somewhere. Score one for the American spirit.

Bats, on the other hand, are moving on to the endangered species list, particularly the Indiana bat. some of you may think bats are funny looking and even scary, but they serve a vital duty: we are expecting a higher than average insect population this summer and bats feast on insects. Look for damaged crops coming from the ecological imbalance.

Finally, we address hunger (actually "we" is James Carroll in the Boston Globe, one of my favorite columnists). Our good idea of turning biofuels into a way of energizing our fuel-dependency has depleted the farm fields worldwide away from growing wheat and corn for food consumption and into plowing those fields for feeding our autos. There are food riots in Haiti, Cairo, and even Senegal.

Where does all this leave us? For me it puts perspective on almost everything I do. If billions on research hasn't solved the cancer crisis, maybe prevention puts a dent in some of it. The death of bats by a "thousand tiny cuts" can be stemmed by legislation fighting against land clearing for timber (which feeds our over-dependence on paper). And then we come to hunger.

Next Sunday in Boston we have the Walk for Hunger. There were half a million hungry people officially registered in Massachusetts for 2007. I'm never hungry for long. I have my sneakers ready.