Watch the movie Living Proof. It will inform, astound and inspire you.
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Living Proof is based on the true story of Dr. Dennis Slamon’s efforts to win FDA approval for Herceptin, a drug (with no side effects) that can halt the growth of certain breast cancer cells.
Harry Connick Jr. played Dr. Slamon on screen. Connick lost his mother to ovarian cancer when he was thirteen, so I imagine he could really relate to this role. Living Proof is the story of Dr. Slamon’s constant battle with the FDA, and the doctors who thought breast cancer research was a waste of money.
Personal stories of women are interspersed, and they come together in Clinical tests required to definitively prove that Herceptin can halt the growth of cancer cells in specific women. About 25 to 33% of women with breast cancer have a specific genetic alternation named HER-2 which causes a particularly aggressive growth of tumors. Dr. Slamon targeted these woman.
Without the efforts of the incredible Lilli Tartikoff Karatz, a mover and shaker American cancer activist, this drug might never have gotten FDA approval. Neither would it have reached the women who need it.
Dr. Slamon had saved Lilli’s husband’s life, and she decided, against Slamon’s objections, to find money when the research institute tabled his funding. She coerced Ronald Perelman, CEO of Revlon, to join in fund-raising tactics, and they raised 80 million dollars.Here are heroes—but watch the film—that’s where the story lies…
While I am on the subject of movies…I love film, but I tell you, sometimes I am aghast with what people watch, or what is created for consumption, whatever.
Husband and I went to see Total Recall, well he watched it. I left.
Total Recall, might have been an okay movie, but after watching at least six trailers of action, violence, and horror that preceded the feature film, I could not take one other person shooting or hitting another person.
I walked out, and got my money back.
Another day, another movie.
Okay, one more. I got a kick out of this one. Jeff who Lives at Home, I would have sworn when I saw it in the theater it was called “Jeff who Lives in His Mother’s Basement,” but when Daughter Darling found it on Netflix it was called Jeff who Lives at Home. Jason Segel and Susan Sarandon star. The movie was not well attended, and well, I had never heard of it. But imagine this: it had a message. What if we innocently and persistently followed the signs that come to us?
