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The USA has 74 million children. Only 0.0024% of children die from cancer every year, according to the National Cancer Institute. Children are just 0.3% of all cancer deaths each year, while adults are 100 times more likely than children to succumb to cancer. For perspective, there will be more children born in the USA today between 12:00PM and 5:00PM than die from cancer in the entire year. Your chances of being struck by lightning are three times greater than that of a child getting cancer. The CDC estimates that 12,000 people aged 1-19 years die each year from accidents. This is seven times more cancer deaths than usual. However, trauma is not fatal. Tens of thousands more children are permanently injured after an accident, but they survive.
Amazingly, 99.998% of children are not killed by cancer. There are whole hospitals and specialists dedicated to this disease. A single hospitalization costs $40,000. The average cost for childhood cancer is $833,000. Our approach is different from other countries, as it does not address pediatric cancer in the same way. We could hire school crossing guards for every child with cancer. This would save many more children. There is a severe shortage of school crossing guards at the moment.
If you really care about saving lives of children, and I know you do, then join me in calling to end pediatric cancer hospitals and all pediatric oncology.
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