"Your child has cancer. I'm sorry, there's no chance of survival."

That is what parents of children diagnosed with DIPG (brain tumor) were told 40 years ago. It's the same thing they are told today. There is still no effective treatment and no chance of survival. Life expectancy at the time of diagnosis is 9 months.

On average, children are six years old when they are told they have cancer. And approximately 1 in 285 will hear this devastating news before their 20th birthday. Second only to accidents, cancer is the leading cause of death in our children.

The National Cancer Institute controls where funds are spent in regard to cancer research, and year after year, they fail to designate more toward the study of pediatric cancer. This limited research funding has resulted in an unacceptable lack of progress in drug development over the past 35 years. Since 1980, only three drugs have been developed specifically for use in children with cancer. Equally important, for many childhood cancers, the same treatments that existed in the 1970s are still used today, unaltered.

Thanks to this abysmal lack of progress, the treatments we currently use to "cure" children, when they do work, are saddling them with a lifetime of chronic, debilitating, and many times life-threatening health complications. More than 95% of childhood cancer survivors face significant health-related issues by the time they are 45, including secondary cancers.

In addition, the lack of acceptable treatment means long, expensive hospital stays, barbaric procedures, and traumatic experiences. Hospital stays oftentimes last upwards of a year. Children spend extended amounts of time in PICUs. They endure multiple surgeries, MRIs, CT scans, X-rays, ultrasounds, MIBG scans, echocardiograms, bone marrow transplants, tracheostomies, aspirations, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation, injections, blood draws, central lines, ports, IVs, transfusions... Their ravaged immune systems lead to countless secondary infections (possibly fatal), requiring even more medication and painful procedures, and forcing long-term social isolation for their own safety. Drugs with a laundry list of serious side effects such as Morphine, Fentanyl, Hydromorphone, Oxycodone, Tramadol, and steroids are standard fare. We won't even list the horrible side effects (including death) of common chemotherapies...

And if they are fortunate enough to survive "treatment" with few complications, they live the rest of their life with repeat testing and follow-up scans, with the ever-looming fear of relapse (when treatments become even less effective).

Childhood cancer affects the entire family. Most often a parent will have to quit their job and devote full-time care to their child with cancer. Savings are drained. Houses are lost. Finances and futures are destroyed.

And if all that isn't terrifying enough, most parents will tell you, "She looked perfectly normal," and, "He was totally fine the day before... cancer doesn't even run in my family...", right before they received this devastating diagnosis. It can happen to anyone. Cancer does not discriminate.

Enough is enough. It's time we demand sufficient funding. Please sign this petition to let the NCI know that WE know how little they are allocating to our children and that we are NOT OK with it! Our children deserve more. They deserve treatments from this decade, that won't kill them before the disease does.

Please sign and help us reallocate funds. This could happen to you. We must find a cure before childhood cancer affects someone you love.

(In the time you spent reading this petition, another child was diagnosed with cancer. One every three minutes.)

* Special thanks to Amy Largent, mother of Julia, who lost her battle with cancer. Thank you for taking my words and thoughts and making sense of them.

**This petition is dedicated to all the families of kids with cancer whose cure didn't come soon enough. 

***Washington Examiner, American Cancer Society