What a heart-breaking introduction to the world of cancer research. I personally know an immensely bright person working on a vicious type of childhood sarcoma

What a heart-breaking introduction to the world of cancer research. I personally know an immensely bright person working on a vicious type of childhood sarcoma cancer, and his work is innovative and may, in time, lead to a highly specific form of treating cancer that won't have the same long-term side effects as the "one size fits all" type of chemo approach. It's important work, and he has received both private and public funding for his lab because he's making progress. It's slow. One thing I have learned though, is that once a parent discovers their child has a diagnosis of that type of cancer, they go online and look it up. Eventually they find his name if they look long enough. Some of those parents write pleading, begging letters to him looking for some kind of treatment - anything. Other than giving them a name for the best clinic in the US in his opinion, there is nothing he can do to help but continue his work. Such letters do appear to take a toll on him, emotionally, because he does care. As a person with a rare, permanent genetic condition myself, I have come to accept and live peacably with the outlook that people, as a group, simply do not find ways to care about other people's problems with a sliver of intensity that they do once one of those problems becomes their problem. It's just the way our species seems to be wired for now.