To All,

This is my 10th year riding in the PMC. Every year I am a little older and asking myself whether it is worth the effort and the risk. And every year, I have said yes to the challenge! My primary motivation has not changed. I am still struck by the devastating impact cancer has on everyone it touches, including my family - physically, emotionally, spiritually and financially - and the great work the Dana Farber does helping people manage, and hopefully overcome, their cancer. 

But this year is different. The difference is that our healthcare system is under assault by the current administration. A better writer than I summarized it this way:

“These attacks are part of a broader assault on America’s health-and-science infrastructure. More than ninety per cent of the nine billion federal dollars for Harvard that are now in danger supports life sciences, primarily through the National Institutes of Health. The university itself receives only a fraction of this funding. Three-quarters of it goes to five independent Boston hospitals affiliated with its medical school: Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The threatened defunding, if implemented, would choke off science and research across all of them.These attacks are part of a broader assault on America’s health-and-science infrastructure.” (Atul Gawande, The Cost of Defunding Harvard, 4/21 New Yorker).

Add to this the efforts of RFK, Jr. to dismantle our public health system and replace it with pseudoscience and ideologically-driven ideas instead of evidence-based science and the need to support real scientifically-based cancer care is clear. We can no longer take for granted the many decades of medical progress we have enjoyed. What I see happening today sets us on a very different course. Therefore, yes, this year is different. This year I am again riding to support the Dana Farber - because our current administration is failing to do so. You have supported me generously and consistently in the past. We need your donation now more than ever. Collectively we can make a difference in the health-and-science infrastructure so essential to providing the best cancer care possible. Thanks for listening and for your anticipated support!

Every donation brings us closer by the mile.

With gratitude,
Ed Nalband