While the recently enacted health care reform law will lower the cost of preventive services like colonoscopies for some Americans, it won’t help increase awareness about the importance of early detection and screening. To really see an increase in screening rates and save lives we need a national colorectal cancer screening and treatment program enacted. Today, is your chance to help make that vision a reality!

Call 1-866-615-3375 and ask your Representative and Senators to “cosponsor the Colorectal Cancer Prevention, Early Detection, and Treatment Act introduced by Representatives Kay Granger and Jim McGovern and by Senators Joseph Lieberman and Kay Bailey Hutchison”

Thanks to advocates like you, we have already called over 200 Members of Congress.

But, we need to reach more Members if we are going to get this life-saving piece of legislation enacted into law. So please take 5 minutes to call 1-866-615-3375 and ask your legislators to cosponsor the “Colorectal Cancer Prevention, Early Detection, and Treatment Act.”

Don’t know what to say when you call? We have a detailed script you can use.

For additional information, please visit http://link.fightcrc.org/butt-in.

ECCO/ESMO UPDATE — BERLIN 2009

A new blood test finds colon, rectal, and stomach cancers early and may be able to predict which cancers are most likely to spread (metastasize).

Higher levels of messenger RNA for the S100A4  gene were found in blood from patients with gastrointestinal cancers than in blood from healthy volunteers.  Blood levels increased as cancer stage increased.  Patients with cancer that had already spread had the highest levels.

Patients whose cancer eventually spread, had higher blood levels of S100A4 mRNA when their blood was first tested, leading to a possible test to predict possible  metastasis. Read the rest of this entry »