A 59-year-old Iowan who has successfully battled cancer three times in her life was among six-thousand cancer survivors who marched in Washington, D.C. today. Margaret Forster of West Des Moines has faced breast cancer, skin cancer and uterine cancer — and she’s beat all three.
“I’m doing fine now,” Forster says. Forster’s part of a delegation of 70 Iowans who’re participating in a national American Cancer Society lobbying effort. By the end of today (Wednesday), Forster and the other Iowans will have met with the state’s five congressmen. “The message…to our congressman is to continue the research dollars. It’s very important that we not reduce that budget,” Forster says.
The proposed 2007 federal budget would reduce the amount of federal tax-dollars going toward cancer research by 40-million. Forster says that’s going in the wrong direction when the research is so close to finding a cure. “Continue this fight and hopefully we’ll have a cure by 2015,” she says. According to the American Cancer Society, more than 16-thousand Iowans will be diagnosed with some form of cancer this year and about 65-hundred will die of cancer in 2006.