I have a serious question to raise. My Dad died of cancer last year. We have had the “war on cancer” since Nixon. Hundreds of billions in research. Still, the odds are not really that good, comparing apples to apples. (Prevention is still the best cure, and if it gets to a certain stage before detection, your chances are not good. The treatments are often worse than the disease. In most situations, I myself would never take chemo, as I find little evidence that it will help that much more than it hurts, overall.)

Is there something wrong with our research paradigm, where all this effort is expended, and results seem so incremental and spotty?

I have another, kind of snotty question. Undoubtedly there are researchers in diabetes who have family members affected, and their motives are basically oriented toward solving this for their loved ones. There are cancer researchers who are primarily motivated by wanting to fix this disease for the sake of those in their family who have suffered from or are at high risk of cancer. But it looks to me as if most research is focused on patentable substances, and not at the whole range of substances that might be effective, even though some of them might not be profitable for some corporation. For example, I know several people who have survived cancer after receiving a death sentence from orthodox oncologists, who recovered using non-patentable regimes, supplements, substances, lifestyle and diet changes. My Dad first had cancer at 45. He died at age 81. He did not take any conventional cancer treatments, except surgery about two years before he died. I believe without those unconventional treatments, he could not have survived all those years. I believe conventional treatments would actually have shortened his life. I cannot prove this, but that is my best guess.

It seems as if medical research is concentrated in one area (vastly profitable schemes) and very little is being done to look at a larger universe of possible solutions. I don't know anything about CF research, but in cancer research there is very little thinking outside the box. No money in it. Also, there's something unseemly about the taxpayers and private donors funding basic research, used by persons/companies who develop a treatment, lock up the patent rights, and get all the rewards.

If a maverick does come up with a cheap cure (for example, the physicians who proved that a bacterium caused most ulcers, and a cheap antibiotic would fix the problem permanently), that will be fought, ignored, and resisted. Although the science has now been accepted, at the clinical level it is not fully implemented. Docs are as likely to write an Rx for Nexium as order a test for h. pylori bacterium.

I say this not to discourage anyone. But it is a little discouraging to me.

Scott, I wish every blessing for your son, that he may survive and thrive. Thank you for sharing the song and story.