Pancreatic cancer is on the prowl this week

Fresh off Patrick Swayze's death comes word that NCAA president Miles Brand passed away today from pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer sucks. While you always hear about the great efforts to cure breast cancer and all these other cancers, how about an effort to to slow down a cancer that has one of the highest fatality rates of all cancers and is the fourth highest cancer killer in the United States among both men and women.

Did you know that the median survival from diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is around 3 to 6 months with a 5-year survival rate of less than 5%.

I know it's fashionable to wear pink and support Phil Mickleson's wife in her battle against breast cancer and to wear yellow to fight testicular cancer. While these are causes that certainly should be supported, how about some support for more deadly forms of cancer. Is it because it's not cool to support somebody who you know is going to die in 5 months?

According to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network:

• Pancreatic cancer is one of the few cancers for which survival has not improved substantially over the past 30 years. As a result, pancreatic cancer surpassed prostate cancer to become the 4th leading cause of cancer-related death in 2003.

• Currently, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) spends less than 2 percent of their budget on pancreatic cancer research.

Anyhow, there is my rant. No point to it other than I hate pancreatic cancer and there is a good chance I will probably die from it before I am 60.

On the bright side, Patrick Swazyze kicked ass in The Outsiders and Red Dawn. Seriously, The Outsiders may have been the coolest thing I ever got to watch in middle school. That was the reward for reading the book. I watched the movie again a year ago or so and it still kicked ass.

Plus how can you ever forget the Swayze/Farley Chippendale's duo.