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Nine years ago, my son started limping. He was 4 years old, and within weeks, doctors told me the pain in his wrists and ankles was leukemia, a high-risk form called Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia. I sat on a hospital bathroom floor and cried before I could even find the words to tell my husband.
No one could have prepared for what followed: two years of chemotherapy, relapse after relapse and ultimately a bone marrow transplant from his brother.
When standard therapies failed, research gave my son new treatment options and our family new hope. Our family has seized each one as an opportunity to keep going.
A breakthrough doesn’t have to answer every question to matter. It can simply give a doctor a new path when the existing ones have run out. And those options only exist because someone invested in the research years before a child needed it.
That’s why I’m voting Yes on Proposition 38, the “Immunology Medical Research and Cures Initiative” on California’s November ballot.
Prop 38 would authorize $8.4 billion in state general obligation bonds for immunology medical research. At least $4.2 billion would support research related to cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s, giving patients innovative treatment options and families more time.
Few people realize how little research attention pediatric cancer has historically received. One analysis found that only 4% of federal cancer-research funding went toward studying pediatric cancers. Although rare, cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease after infancy among children in the United States.
Children aren’t simply smaller adults, and discoveries in adult cancer research do not automatically translate into safe and effective treatments for them. Last year brought another blow to the entire medical research system when the federal government terminated 181 grants, cutting off an estimated $317 million in funding.
Despite a portion of the funding being reinstated, the damage was already done: labs closed, researchers fired and clinical trials came to an abrupt stop. Meaningful, breakthrough research must be supported with reliable, self-sustained funding.
That’s why California needs Prop 38: it creates a stable, state-level source of funding that doesn’t rise and fall with Washington politics. The measure is designed to pay for itself by returning 10% of licensing revenue to the state to repay the bond, including interest. Once repaid, the proceeds will continue funding the research in perpetuity.
Every dollar goes to California nonprofit universities and research institutions, never to for-profit drug companies. State administrative costs are also capped at 2%. And although we have a long way to go to improve healthcare affordability, any treatments and cures from the research must be sold to Californians at a 20% discount below the national average.
California already has world-class researchers and hospitals, but if we don’t invest in them in a sustainable way, we risk sending not just our researchers elsewhere but our families in search of the care they need.
Loving a child through cancer has taught me to hold two things at once: the fight for one more day and the fight for a future for others.
I’m voting Yes on Prop 38 because whatever comes for my own son, I won’t let the next family face this without every tool science can offer.
Editor’s note: Bhavika Taunk is a Danville resident and mother of two. Her older son was diagnosed with leukemia at age four and is now navigating life as a childhood cancer survivor. She writes and advocates on pediatric cancer, survivorship and disability access.
