Beyond Cancer

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Let's partner for all of it. Learn more@edwardjones.com good morning Jean Paul is off today on Dr. John the and this is a special edition of Sunday morning special and unusual as well.

That's because I'm here in my role as a doctor as well as a broadcast journalist together this morning will be looking at cancer and its impact on patients and families and most importantly at research that offers hope of someday reaching the world beyond cancer. I'll be reporting on advances in immunotherapy. Teaching the body to fight off cancer more effectively. Among the other issues will be exploring the dramatic steps. Some women are taking after breast cancer surgery.

As Erin Moriarty will be telling us it's a matter of choice.

I didn't choose to go flat.

It chose me meet women who are breaking the silence and the rules when it comes to dealing with breast cancer instead of reconstructive surgery they are embracing their scars. I love my body more than I ever have before my body I had on Sunday morning what it means to go flat. A string of cancer cases near a polluted area is that cause-and-effect or just a random occurrence. Turns out cancer clusters are hard to prove. As Anna Warner discovered, is there some in the water in one New Hampshire community, would you walk in that stream, you know, with my boots on searching for the cause of the cancer cluster and separating the facts from the fear ahead on Sunday morning. Cheryl Crow is a singer with the cancer message informed by personal experience this morning. She shares it with Rita braver, Cheryl Crow, with happily making music and delighting in her role as a mom sex young and suddenly they tell you that breast cancer is nothing that maybe were all the sadness lights swirling into the exam ramp on Sunday morning Cheryl Crow be in the value of early detection.

What, if anything, can we do in our own day to day lives to possibly hold cancer at bay.

Martha Kushner has some food for thought. How many times have you had cancer five times along the way. Chef Harry Levine became a believer the relationship of food to health and wellness.

That's massive so your relationship with what you grocery cart matters, broccoli, kale, tolerance from carrots.

Can you your way to a cancer free life later on Sunday morning all kinds of promising cancer treatments are on the horizon. Susan Spencer will be showing us a few of them throughout the morning.

What do death stalker scorpions and great dance have in common are both helping cancer doctors find new ways of treatment. This will potentially be the biggest improvement in cancer surgery. Maybe in 50 years. That's saying a lot. New cancer treatments. Maybe just on the horizon here this Sunday morning those stories and more are just ahead network featuring radio and TV personality talking business support team and played cancer has plagued humankind from our very beginnings, our timeline comes from Jane Pauley when life began, so did cancer restoring animals have cancer in humans find signs of cancer and ancient specimens physician scientist Siddharth Mukherjee calls cancer. The Emperor of all maladies in his Pulitzer prize-winning history of the disease around 400 BC, Hippocrates, the Greek physician known as the father of medicine is center first given it a name, Kino's, why was it chose and why that word comes from crab and there was something about tumors as they send their fingers of fingerlings into the body. They look like the legs of the crabs of Doug underneath the sand, but the earliest reference to cancer can be found about a thousand years earlier.

Here on this ancient Egyptian papyrus.

As for treatment, it says there is none. In fact, it's not until the arrival of anesthesia in the mid-19th century. That surgery became a viable option. Thought you could open up a human body take out an ovary that may have been involved with cancer and so that human being up again and they will come back to life. This was an amazing advancement. Labs are around the world doing cancer research was hundreds of G who conducts research and treats patients at New York's Columbia University Medical Center says by the beginning of the 20th century x-ray technology would give rise to the very earliest form of radiation treatment and the use of toxic chemicals to kill cancer cells was commonly called chemotherapy was a 1940s development of the dream was to invent a chemical that would kill the cancer so but spare than normal so problem is that cancers evolve out of normal cells there very close cousins cancer of the cervix. Well, given the potential therapies were often as fearsome as the disease itself a cancer diagnosis came to be cloaked in secrecy, even shame, when my mother was surviving cancer. It was literally unspeakable change that you couldn't shove it under the carpet anymore. We saw our children dying from and we saw our parents die from it. It have to be a public word because otherwise we couldn't have a conversation. How can there be a warrant. Something you can name. Which brings us to 1971 when Pres. Richard Nixon did in fact declare war on cancer. I sent a message to Congress.

The first of this year which provided relational commitment for the conquest of cancer.

The war on cancer grew out of a particular optimism around cancer in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Remember human beings. I just walked on the moon when we kill cancer in 10 years.

Very doable.

It turns out that optimism was premature was the realization that a patient's genes and the fact be calling the shots. What tells us so to stop growing or stopping in the first place.

The idea that sitting at the center of the puzzle was genes that was a huge leap because all of a sudden you had a framework to understand cancer researchers began to understand cancers mechanism clues started to fall into place, and the Human Genome Project completed in 2003 led to development of still more treatments among them individually targeted immunotherapy techniques and where are we in the timeline or the ark. The problem remains, how do you target how you kill the cancer so what's bearing normal cells. That was a puzzle in 1920 was in 1970 puzzle in 2017 more tools now many, many more tools therapies Jane spoke of a moment ago in the very earliest stages of development and so the effort to unlock the secret within the human immune system is already offering hope to patients for whom traditional treatments fallen short. 12-year-old is made, it will tell you what happened to her. Seems like a miracle and you're feeling how horrible, terrible, back when she was just nine feeling weak and dizzy. She was taken to a hospital on Long Island were doctors gave her a diagnosis she barely understood leukemia for 98% of children with this form of cancer respond well to chemotherapy. So her doctor started there. But after four brutal rounds as cancer was getting worse natural reaction is to think wisely so that God will desperate out of options as he had one last chance. She was enrolled in the clinical trial at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan for an experimental treatment called car to house everything for six weeks.

Dr. Kevin Curran, pediatric oncologist to treat says he couldn't find a single leukemia so not one that wanted to think I thought this worked in a patient who basically 10 years ago would've been told there's nothing we can do as he is healthy, just a little puppy from steroids because of a promising new frontier in the war on cancer immunotherapy. Using a patient's own immune system to find and kill cancer cells.

One of the biggest challenges of fighting cancer has been that cancer cells find ways of becoming invisible to the body's defenses and the immune system can't kill what it can't say so doctors. In essence, taught as his immune system to see they took billions of her white blood cells.

Cells that normally are good at destroying invaders like bacteria and viruses, but bad at fighting cancer and turn them into cancer killers. We can take those cells out of the body genetically modified them, teach them how to fight cancer and then infuse them back into the patient like the bloodhounds given the scent of the cancer exactly say go traditional therapies like chemo and radiation. Often damage healthy tissue along with cancer cells. The hope is immunotherapy will be more targeted and better at sparing normal tissue. But there have been serious side effects, even death. Once we know it could work with her working round-the-clock Dr. Steven Rosenberg has been a pioneer in the field of therapy at the National Cancer Institute for more than four decades. In 1984 he was the first doctor to cure a dying patient using her own immune system. So these are immune cells that will also be the first to tell you that all these years later. Immunotherapy is still in its infancy gone to the point now where I think we understand why the patients were successfully treated experience tumor regression based on that knowledge. I think were going to see dramatic progress in the next few years to come. But most patients don't have years to wait longer somewhat compromised by 29-year-old Barack government filer has a sarcoma cancer in the connective tissue near his spine that has spread to his lungs. Normal lung would be black. These are all abnormal tumors. Every one of these years many hundreds of different tumors that are in his long Barack has already been through two rounds of chemotherapy and multiple surgeries. He came to us as do all of our patients having exhausted.

Modern medicine can offer and our goal is not to practice today's medicine but to create the medicine of tomorrow and that Rosenberg believe would be immunotherapy justice was done with Desi rocks white blood cells were taught in the lab to recognize the specific cancer type. A month later Barack gets back is juiced of cells 90 billion of them put into battle.

You can just imagine those cells chewing up the tumor. There are very helpful three drawer lottery actually be part of this trial is just so now he's waiting to see if those cells did their job up until now the highly personalized treatment that patients like Barack Anesi received has only been available in clinical trials, but by the end of the year very similar treatment will most likely be approved by the FDA and another type of immunotherapy is already available in hospitals across the country. Drugs called checkpoint inhibitors are being used to fight certain types of cancers of the kidney and bladder, lungs and more with especially positive results for melanoma, while effective treatment for widespread or metastatic cancer remains elusive. Doctors are hopeful there, at least on the right path right now in the spectrum of cancer treatment. What percentage can be addressed by therapy. If you look at all cancer patients.

Perhaps 10% can be helped by immunotherapy today but it's getting better every day, five weeks after cell transfusion rock returned to the National Cancer Institute first checkup said that comfort see the lot over the x-rays very carefully. We compare them to the x-rays that you had before we started the treatment and there was, as you know, rapid growth of the tumor that we want to see these tumors go away, but sometimes it takes time.

Sadly, time ran out. Barack's fight against the cancer. He died two months later. For now, patients like Izzy Pineda remain the exception, but doctors Rosenberg and Curran are hopeful and continue to explore the boundaries of this new frontier one previously incurable patient at a time for lying in bed at night that probably rush before so this is the main entrance coming up cancer clusters a multitude of potential advances on the horizon in the field of cancer research and Susan Spencer will be sampling some of them the course of the morning, behold their Israeli death stalker scorpion's sting is excruciating its venom can kill my cheer to love unless you're Dr. Jim Olson sounds terrifying, sexy, beautiful, beautiful because the death stalker's venom may revolutionize how cancer surgery is done.

Dr. Olson is a brain cancer physician and researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington we were inspired by a 16-year-old girl who had a brain tumor. After 12 hours of surgery, surgeons left behind a big piece. We decided that day to find a way to make the cancer white up so that surgeons could see it while they're operating. The key is the scorpion venom synthetically reproduced minus the poison. When injected into a patient's bloodstream it sticks to cancer cells but not to normal cells.

Combine that sticky molecule with fluorescent dye and you've got what Olson calls tumor paint what problem does tumor paint salt. Sometimes it's really hard for surgeons tell what is cancer what is normal and in the brain can't take out a big chunk of normal.

Just make sure you get the cancer and tumor paint distinguishes clearly the difference between brain cancer and normal brain. In all of our experiments done so far. This image of a cancerous tumor telling to the margin here. I can tell you where. Where is the tumor. There well but in Jack's tumor paint and there's no mistaking it. The tumor lights up. This is definitive I can see why you're excited about that. I'm thrilled about this year's returning nature upside down. That's exactly what sounds a lot like science fiction, but Olson says it could be an FDA approved reality as soon as 2019. I think this will potentially be the biggest improvement in cancer surgery.

Maybe in 50 years God blessing. Israeli death stalker score on God bless our patients because you know they're the ones that motivate us to do this. What does it mean when a rare cancer strikes several people in the same area is a case of cause and effect. Anna Warner takes a closer look at cancer clusters do you think from what you know now that the contamination is moving. We know you know Dr. Thomas Sherman is on the hunt for a killer. Here's where the landfill is where this arrow is key task force investigating why several children in the seacoast region of New Hampshire developed a rare cancer called rhabdomyolysis sarcoma. The cancer that took the life of Paul Thomas's 14-year-old son Sam something missing in your life will always be there and his wife Lynn say more than two years after Sam's death, questions persist in your head you like why are there three cases that can go off at the top your head in the seacoast area.

Why sure says it's a cancer cluster which the Centers for Disease Control defines as a greater than expected number of cancer cases that occurs within a group of people in a geographic area over a period of time, and while that definition may be black-and-white. It turns out that almost everything else is anything but state health departments get an average of a thousand reports of alleged clusters every year, but historically only a handful are ultimately recognized as true residential cancer clusters.

One of those is the 1980s case of Woburn, Massachusetts story told by the book and movie a civil action. More than 20 cases of leukemia in children were linked to chemical contamination of the water supply.

According to epidemiologist Suzanne Condon who investigated for the state. How hard is it to figure out something really is a cancer cluster. I've been asked that before in my standard response is extraordinarily difficult at best times River, New Jersey, is another recognized case, but some other notorious incidents often thought to be cancer clusters not that includes the California events depicted in the movie Aaron Brockovich section of Niagara Falls, New York today investigating the effects on residents of poisonous chemicals from his love canal case in upstate New York. Investigators have to consider several factors, including how often the cancer occurred how long it took for it to develop whether genetics might play a role.

And one more thing chance. It seems like people want to say it just coincidence I think people have a hard time understanding that sometimes there are random patterns of disease and things can happen because of chance. So when it comes to the seacoast cancer cluster. I think they have an incredible challenge before them. So this is the main entrance. So far Dr. Sherman and others are focusing their questions on this old closed landfill when they say the military and others dump toxic wastes. New Hampshire officials say they have found chemicals used to make commercial products in some wells near the landfill, but they say there's no proof they are linked to the suspected seacoast cancer cluster. So every time we find something generates a bunch more questions and those responsible for the landfill deny there's any connection but this is still hope for an answer, one that might help save someone else's child. These rare cancers are out there and I really think that that has to be looked at. So that Sam's death is not in vain. Featuring radio and TV personality talking sport played for women who have mastectomies what to do next is increasingly a matter of choice and what some women are choosing to do may surprise you. Aaron Moriarty of 48 hours takes what we caution you is a candid look. My name is Debbie Bowers I live in I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014 and I had a double mastectomy cancer is not just a killer thief answer that I was diagnosed in 2009 with breast cancer and I had a double mistake to me. Each of these women, ranging in age from 30 4052 have lost breast cancer. Yes, it's lasted certainly learn to deal with it differently and it's out.

These women chose to deal with loss that is sparking conversation. They are warning some of these images are graphic. They call it going flat instead of replacing their cars with surgical implants.

These women are embracing their scars even bearing them publicly solidly likely never heard about anybody like me is like where are the people I got okay like I never met a person before and where are you. That was how Melanie Testa felt six years ago when she chose not to have reconstructive surgery or to wear removable brass forms for me.

I just don't want to present two bodies. I don't want to walk out of my home with a breasted body and then returned to my home and remove my breast and then have a flat body. I didn't choose to go flat. It shows me how I look at it and you can't close those says that when she was diagnosed with breast cancer wanted I wanted what was she went from breast surgeon to plastic surgeon the same day they did a beautiful job and I was very happy but Marianne, one of the estimated 20%, according to doctors who suffer side effects had infection after infection. It was just fine will be great. There's another myth says they drug colored lab for that reconstructive brass will feel real like regular breast to somebody else who's touching him not a man perhaps are to ever feel like real breast.

There's no feeling there's no nipple, there's no sensation on the other hand Samantha went says after going flat.

She gained sensation in terms of sexuality. Scars are very tender things and there's this feeling in my chest and it still in erogenous zone which doesn't happen with implants. It's this foreign thing when you just have a scar that fell when you take a shower. When you look in the mirror is a continual reminder that you had cancer questioning the map of who we are and I don't want to forget what I've done and when I've been through still more than half of female breast cancer patients, nearly 60% who were offered breast reconstruction take. I think that for us insurgents. We feel that if we're going to take a body part off that we should then replace it with something that looks just as good. Dr. Deborah Axelrod is a surgeon and the director of clinical breast services and New York University's Perlmutter cancer center. She says reconstructive surgeries have greatly improved and yet she agrees that looking good can have some unexpected drawbacks you know if your stomach sleeper and you have an implant. It's like sleeping on a frisbee. Sometimes Dr. Axelrod now regularly discusses the option of going flat with the patient. Thanks, Dale.

The majority of women will choose reconstruction rather than going flat since the image of our bodies.

We want to be whole beauty is something in mind and heart. These women hope to change that perception where just as just as much women before hand, there is a growing awareness and acceptance of going flat.

They say this campaign for a national jam recent fashion show and websites that offer stories selfies in this sisterhood. What it's done for all of us can express their emotional right now is about the friendships that we've made an incredible friendship.

Friendships that have helped each woman except what they have lost and also what they've gained. I love my body. I love my body more than I ever have before. I see the beauty I see the strength I see the strength of my conviction. I'm not doing that to my body. My body is good. So you hear about this trial truly man's best friend. Okay, now small wonders. Children saved from once fatal cancers thanks to ongoing research. The ranks are growing by the day. Tracy Smith has a progress report okay when we first met Edie Gallagher in 2013.

She seemed like your typical healthy four-year-old.

First, that you never know. She just been to hell and back six months old. Edie was diagnosed with neuroblastoma cancer of the nerve tissue with tumors in her spine and belly that were growing out of control chemo and surgery were working. So doctors through a Hail Mary pass and gave her an experimental drug that turned off the specific gene in her body that was making her cancer grow.

She says it tasted awful, but in less than a month. Her cancer was totally gone today at home in South Carolina, eight years old and still cancer free parents, Nick and Emily are of course over the moon. How much medicine a sham.

She is not on anything right now. Nothing. Nothing.

The good news is that a little girl survived pediatric cancer. The better news is that it's happening more often. Are we meeting childhood cancer were making advances in certain trouble cancers we have in five years Dr. Peter Adamson at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, heads up the nationwide children's oncology group, and he says there's good reason for hope. So let's start with the most common childhood cancer cute little bicycle AOL in the 1960s child with AOL adolescent 10% chance of being cured, the same child born today as close to a 90% chance of being so that's dramatic progress in a relatively short span of history. If there's a downside to saving children's lives that most young cancer survivors are in for problems down the road so it can survive, but still was for the rest of his or her life. That's right. We have children who as teenagers require hip replacements because of her treatment than there are number of children who, by the time they're in their 20s early 30s experience, heart failure, and here's the real thing or since more adults get cancer. The kids, there's less government research money for childhood cancer cures far less the estimate from the National Cancer Institute is about 4% of their budget goes to studying childhood cancer. Why is that so small there are some believe that we solve the childhood cancer problem we have work your children today that 10 years ago we knew we couldn't that only comes to research, so a large chunk of pediatric research money comes from private charities. One of the biggest was started by a young cancer patient Alex Scott who raised research money by selling lemonade on her front lawn.

Alex died in 2004, but her foundation has attracted thousands of volunteers this report are included and raised more than $100 million to bankroll new treatments like the saved Edie Gilder's life. The people at Northwestern Mutual life insurance who were already big contributors to childhood cancer research were apparently moved quite a story even built a float in her honor for this year's Rose Parade in Pasadena my giant floral sculpture of a blonde former cancer patient just being a little girl again this and that something her parents.

Thank heaven for every day you literally just been rushed to the ICU and left the hospital that afternoon I looked in the rearview always car seat empty and I remember the people that leave the hospital and they don't get the but their child in the corset ever get when we left the hospital she came with those she loved both of us so it's a big big thing was just six months broccoli kale head cabbage does diet the make a difference. Very healthy.

We got some food for thought about about dieting cancer. Martha touched her as a stuffed zucchini with orzo risotto chef Eric Levine's eureka moment about healthy food came with his cancer. Yes, he's beaten cancer save time.

That moment came on the best and worst day of his life. Hours after chemotherapy and radiation. Barely able to understand that he competed on the food network show in the middle like moment of clarity whether you know what I could win this competition could be cancer you did when what his doctor told him change the way you eat or die. So far he's lost 65 pounds.

The relationship of food to health and wellness. That's massive I get it now. He wants everybody to get it. He sneaks healthy dishes like the stuffed acorn squash under the menu at his New Jersey restaurant Jim down your throat will resist. I definitely will like this at home all these things can work for you.

What cancer patients eat matters, prepare meals on days when you're feeling well. Mary is an oncology dietitian at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and reported that two out of three people in the shop at that very first oncology appointment for treatment are Artie suffering nutritionally under nourished amount. So we had about a cup of chicken soup, tobacco, terrible because he was so under nourished Apple phones chemotherapy session had to be canceled any time we hold treatment impact on survival. That's how powerful nutritionist during cancer treatment. So is there evidence that food can actually cause cancer.

There's a relationship between high fat meats and certain types of cancers. There's even a body of evidence about obesity and cancer female cancers pancreas cancer. What I like to say Martha is eat the rainbow. We want to write colorful vegetables and fruits the power of prevention Dr. Margaret Cuomo has produced a documentary and a companion book, both called a world without cancer, we took a spin around the market on Long Island qualities vegetables and foods are seen here today.

Elements that are going to help cancer so says Cuomo. But there is some debate about the role of specific foods in cancer prevention.

Even organics still.

She's a believer and says consider organic but if you gasp at the price by much.

As you can afford it important that you eat the vegetable. That's the important thing so if you cannot get them organic vegetables regardless.

Here's something you may not we want to keep to the periphery of a supermarket, healthier food to be located. Cuomo says fill your cards with fruits and veggies like tomatoes versus oranges, broccoli, kale, tolerance, and she says try green tea green tea is known to have catechumens and that has powerful anticancer effect.

We have been and what does all that look like on your dinner plate. Two thirds of that plate, consisting of whole grains and fruits protein can be rental. I can be a lean protein like fish or poultry, and what you say to people who say I hate all that stuff. Learn to like you, my unconscious content theories in 68 get a second opinion. Let's get it to boxing Internet was invasive and for video that's no game featuring radio talking sport played beyond cancer special edition of Sunday morning here again is Dr. John Liverpool topping the charts with hit songs is just one side of Sheryl Crow spreading her hard-won knowledge about early cancer detection is another.

She talks about that and more with Rita braver.

This is where were used to seeing Sheryl Crow on stage with a guitar in her hand x-ray top to bottom machine and side the subject with only about teenage girl and she makes no person which makes 3D imaging machines for mammograms be a difference between real harsh treatment or something that's early and is ultimately care understand the importance of early detection in 2006. You discovered that you had breast cancer. How did you even learn the routine mammogram is a very inopportune time was right for the grannies in my personal life is kind of in turmoil and the last thing I want to do is got a mammogram, but I did and the result was come back in six months that we think something is concepts that lets us keep an eye on it and my gynecologist concept. There is no six months you don't wait. Let's go and get a second opinion.

Let's get a lapsing Internet was invasive. Remember the emotions that went to your mind you're young and suddenly they tell you that breast cancer. Yeah, I do see that maybe were all the sadness lights swirling in she sat off the bat you're not and I very early will do lumpectomy and radiation you will be just get on with your life life that Cheryl had worked hard to build. Raising summary is a great school teacher.

After college I had singing commercial jingles six. She decided to try her luck in LA it took you a while nobody was beaten down your door and saying please honey coming to some music and everything that we don't know what to do with blue-eyed country soul singer. I was pretty much turned on my writing time cyclist Lance arms.

The whole side unfolding publicly, it can work so long and excelling records. But when your life is a party become like in a celebrity sound suddenly there was a convergence of feeling interested in my private life and that for me was such an intrusion. She had 33 radiation treatments every morning at the opportunity just lay there, my head and reassess my life and when she got a clean bill of health. She decided to take her mom's advice and not wait for marriage to have children.

She just sent.get a surrogate. It doesn't have to look like the life you are born into and that's what I did. I just thought you know so sure she dotes on her two adopted sons action. Also found time to launch a new line of clothing which she's pedaling on HSN slander working from her converted barn in Nashville. She's developing pieces based on her all American style is a great way to get close out the people who can't afford the three and a $50 jeans which now I'm I got my hometown all the time is basically middle America is that people more economically strapped, that's who you want these clothes to appeal to Scott, her latest record is called my cell. She performed one of her albums singles at LA same school.

Halfway there doesn't matter if you're this person and I'm that person doing the same thing says she'll continue urging women to get an annual mammogram.

I was healthy and have any family history. The technology is getting better and better. So at a certain age taken in your own hands to make sure that your your advocate. I look at the opportunity is more of a gift. It's worth up next when silence can kill beyond cancer. This is a subject of enormous complexity and imagine this a vaccine that can actually prevent cancer. If only people would take. Here's Dr. Taryn rule 14 American about 80 million of us are infected with the human papilloma virus. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection.

Although most people don't develop symptoms or health problems. But around 30,000 cases and HPV associated cancers occur in the United States every year.

HPV is the main cause of cervical cancer in women in the cause of many vulvar national throat tonic consular anile and penile cancers. The good news is there's a vaccine for HPV which can prevent the majority of these cancers.

It's recommended for all kids ages 11 or 12 years before they are exposed to the virus, which is when it works best. Here's the bad news only 63% of girls and 50% boys are getting the vaccine. It's the most underutilized immunization for children for cancer doctors. This is a public health crisis. So who is responsible for a brief. The problem lies in part with pediatricians and other providers who haven't been aggressive enough in talking to parents about it.

Study show that a forceful endorsement from the physician is the most important factor in whether children get the vaccine, but parents are also a big factor here.

Many choose to skip the vaccine rather than acknowledge their child will eventually be sexually active cervical cancer. A recent TV ad portrays adults diagnosed with cancer asking their parents. Who knew that there was something that could help protect me from HPV when I was 11 or 12 way before I would even be exposed to it now mom and dad for others there's concern about the safety of the vaccine dozens of studies confirm safe. Finally, consider this Canada, Australia, the UK, even Rwanda and HPV vaccination rates nearly double hours. The CDC has been trying to get the message across the HPV vaccine prevents cancer it saves lives. We need to do better at protecting our children from cancers. They never need to get next his toughest battle. The Hippocratic oath advises doctors to first do no harm.

So imagine intentionally using the virus that causes paralysis. That's what doctors are trying for some patients with glioblastoma the same cancer. We just found out Arizona Sen. John McCain has this disease is never a more worthy opponent. It was last Wednesday night when McCain's office revealed the diagnosis following surgery to remove a blood clot from the front of his brain may explain why the senator seems somewhat disoriented last month while questioning former FBI director James Coleman in the case of Mr. Coley. You present.

Call me serves me case present trial, McCain's doctor say the procedure removed any evidence of the tumor on imaging. The problem with glioblastoma is that microscopic cells have likely already traveled along nerves and spread to other parts of the brain. So this is a disease that tends to recur. Glioblastoma is the same cancer that killed Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy. It's different from the more treatable form of cancer that former Pres. Jimmy Carter had a melanoma that spread to his brain. As for what comes next. McCain will likely receive a combination of radiation and chemotherapy which takes the form of a pill but generally well tolerated median patient survival is about 15 months, that's a number neuro- oncologist Dr. Henry Friedman is working to improve. I think that when you have this diagnosis. You must find a program that will think outside of the box not just go with the standard approaches would look for something that pushes the field and hopefully pushes the outcome to a much better place infecting the tumors with polio as Scott Kelly reported for 60 minutes in 2015. Friedman is working on a trial at Duke University for patients with cancer has returned a genetically engineered form of the poliovirus is inserted directly into the brain tumor to affect jumpstart the immune system, and there's no cancer in the well we don't see any cancer active cancer cells in the chin sterol on this new therapy is still in its infancy. Dr. Friedman says the results so far are encouraged he and other researchers. We are just getting started. I believe that we are slowly inch by inch making progress in this disease. There is no question that their patients will be insured with glioblastoma for many of my colleagues around the country might disagree with me. Be wrong because it's true. It's a small incremental population every year, but there are people who can beat this disease. This is the first time. Sen. McCain has battled cancer he's been treated for melanoma multiple times, but his colleagues in Washington say if there's anyone who competed again. It's this former POW and presidential candidate who shown a fierce will to prevail next a videogame for Joel again for Joel is a different sort of videogame. It's one families heartfelt tribute to a lost son and a reminder Ben Tracy tells us of how far the fight against cancer has yet to go. Just her and her daughter eats homework time in the greenhouse old just outside of Denver and Ryan Amy Green's kitchen table is definitely for closely at the pictures on the refrigerator, you realize it's not nearly as full as it should be well. What they don't want to remember in him we don't think about their son Joel was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2010. He was just one-year-old.

The tumors left him partially blind and unable to speak, but at first, the treatment was working like 11 wheeler a year and half past that we were seeing this miracle like people from Ryan is a videogame developer so he and his team created a different sort of game they called it that Dragon cancer. The impressionistic game chronicles Joel's battle with cancer and the emotional ups and downs of caring. But it's really more about contemplation than competition.

While you can make you laugh and comfort him. Sorry guys, sorry guys, it's not good is often painfully hard to play you are there when the greens learned Joel's tumors and returns many workers assumes the chemotherapies failed and there were times we stopped him from crying when he is dehydrated and inconsolable after another round of chemotherapy was was a retelling of an eye hospital tool and it was one of the hardest my life as a father being unable to do the very thing that I pride myself on comfort. Much of you know we both keep using the word game. It just seems like such an odd term. I would say no it's not a game, but there are games and it's not about, but there are moments when life is a mixture of the sorrowful joyful weeping and playing playing and so I hope it's a reflection of our life.

You know, in the form of joy beyond all expectations.

Yet the miracle story. These parents thought they were telling ended in 2014 he was five, I focus everything and missing hand like we can all rally around finishing the game from caring for Joel to care about that Dragon cancer became a phenomenon the gaming community is a very intense drive want their children to have some impact on the world and have a child that's one more treatment for them in creating a game. I think a lot of it was a desire to make sure that Joel's life impacted the world in the final scene of the game.

Julie surrounded by all of the things he loves puppies bubbles and pancakes. You can finally see and speak the ever looks like and whatever would be full of light. It's just not possible to cover all the complexities of cancer in a single morning so we urge you to go to our Sunday morning website for more information on cancer and the ways were combating it and next week on Sunday morning, Sunday. There's no question were making progress against cancer, but it still has the upper hand way too often. I've lost too many patients to cancer and many of you are undoubtedly touched by it.

Right now, if we are going to get the upper hand, we have to do better to remember Pres. Obama and VP Biden's moonshot initiative against cancer. To which I say let's go to the moon. Dr. John the poop. Please join Jane Pauley. Here again next Sunday morning. This is intelligence matters with former acting Dir. of the CIA. Michael Morel bridge Colby is cofounder and principal of the Marathon initiative project focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States bring your sustained great power competition states put on my do something we can usually figure it out what people are saying and what we can know analytically and empirically as our strategic situation or motor situations not being matched up with follow.

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