Knowledge is power

GCC hosts public forum on cancer

By Anthony Bonaparte

“A building is only as good as the people in it,” said Rosalind Goodman, sitting in the atrium of the Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Centre (GCC) on Pine Ave.

Goodman was speaking of the people that work there and of the upcoming four-part Public Forum cancer and how, thanks to research, it is being rendered a chronic disease.

Under the direction of Michel Tremblay, PhD and principal investigator of the GCC, the forum is intended for people with a thirst for knowledge — be they people afflicted with the disease, their family members, or simply members of the lay public.

The first session, Cancer Initiation, on Monday, Nov. 9 (6:30 - 8:30 p.m.), will cover topics such as understanding how cancer starts, how it is diagnosed and how to arrest its early development.

Subsequent sessions in January, March, and May 2010, will discuss understanding why and how cancer grows; how cancer cells travel through the blood system; and developments that improve quality of life after cancer.

Many of the lecturers are award-winning members of the Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada. “We have the best of our scientists speaking in these different topics,” said Dr. Tremblay.

Goodman’s family wanted to do more way than put their name on a building. “We wanted to make this a great centre and keep our finest graduates in Quebec and Canada. To have them study here and not go abroad,” she said. “We also want to be a sense of comfort and support to the scientists who are working here.”

The Goodman family has good reason to put their focus, energy — and money — on cancer research. Twenty years ago, son Jonathan, at age 21, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease and the family had a decision to make.

 “My son’s doctor said at the time that if it was his son, he would go to Boston” Goodman remembered. “They didn’t have all the equipment that they have today. So it’s not because our doctors are not any bit as smart as any of the other doctors, they just did not have the toys.”

So for radiation treatment, Jonathan went to the Harvard University-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His chemotherapy took place in Montreal.

Twenty years later, Rosalind Goodman, a non-smoker, is battling lung cancer. “I had an operation and I had chemotherapy and I don’t look back now, I’m just moving on.”

She said lung cancer is particularly lonely because there is no sisterhood like there is with breast cancer. “When people have lung cancer, there’s a stigma to it,” said Goodman, who was fortunate to find it early on during a general examination’s chest X-ray.

“The lucky people find it by chance because by the time you have the symptoms, it’s usually too late.”

When cancer first touched the Goodman’s, the entire family began to devote their time, energy and financial resources by supporting medical research — something with which they have some familiarity.

Goodman’s husband, Morris, runs Pharmascience, Inc., a 1,700-employee company engaged in the research, development, manufacture and marketing of generic and brand products. And Jonathan Ross Goodman, now 42, is president and CEO of Paladin Labs, a specialty pharmaceutical company. He has also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for cancer research through a bike-a-thon to Quebec City.

“He wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for research,” said his mother.

Speaking of the lecture series, Goodman says she hopes people will come and learn. “I had nothing like that when I was diagnosed and I would have loved to come to something like this,” she said, adding “I think knowledge is power.”

The forum will take place at the McIntyre Medical Building, 3655 Promenade Sir William Osler. For more info call Annette Novak at 514-398-4970, email annette.novak@mcgill.ca, or visit http://cancercentre.mcgill.ca. Admission is $15.