Country Music Supports St. Jude's Children's Hospital

This lens is part of the Virtual Concert for Charity this week being sponsored by the Squidoo Activists. There are so many Country Stars who support charity that I could not single one out. Many do support St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.

Images: Squid Singer. © Kirsti A. Dyer. Some Rights
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St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, founded by the late entertainer Danny Thomas, maintains 60 inpatient beds and treats about 260 patients each day, about 5,100 in active status, most of whom are treated on an outpatient basis.

It is the first institution established for the sole purpose of conducting basic and clinical research into catastrophic childhood diseases, mainly cancer. St. Jude is the largest childhood cancer research center in the world in terms of the number of patients enrolled in research protocols and successfully treated.

St. Jude has treated children from all 50 states and from around the world.

Research findings at St. Jude are shared with doctors and scientists all over the world. St. Jude also enjoys a worldwide reputation as a teaching facility. The medical and scientific staff published more than 500 articles in academic journals in 2006.

St. Jude is the only pediatric research center where families never pay for treatment not covered by insurance, and families without insurance are never asked to pay.

St. Jude continues an extensive expansion program to bolster the hospital's research and treatment efforts, while more than doubling the size of its original campus. The expansion includes the GMP building, the nation's only pediatric research center on-site facility for production of highly specialized treatments and vaccines, and an expanded Department of Immunology. The new Chili's Care Center integrates patient care and research where rapidly evolving CT (computerized tomography) and MR (magnetic resonance) technology will keep St. Jude at the cutting edge for radiation therapy in a pediatric/adolescent setting.

The hospital's daily operating costs are approximately $1,267,349, which are primarily covered by public contributions.

Eighty-five cents of every dollar received supports the research and treatment at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

St. Jude pioneered a combination of chemotherapy, radiation and, when necessary, surgery to treat childhood cancers. The hospital continues to expand the use of stem cell transplantation as treatment for pediatric cancers and genetic diseases.

Peter C. Doherty, PhD, of the St. Jude Immunology department, won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1996. He shares the award with Rolf M. Zinkernagel, MD, of the University of Zurich. Their findings have led to breakthroughs in the understanding and treatment of viral infections and cancers, and in the development of organ transplant procedures and vaccines.

Since its inception, St. Jude has developed protocols that have brought survival rates for childhood cancers from less than 20 percent to about 70 percent overall. The current survival rates for selected childhood cancers now include:

Diagnosis Survival Rate
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), most common form of childhood cancer 94%
Hodgkin disease (cancer of the lymph system) 90%
Medulloblastoma (brain cancer) 85%
Wilms tumor (kidney tumor) 90%

Each St. Jude patient must be referred by a physician, have a disease currently under study at the hospital, and be eligible for a current research protocol.

St. Jude researchers and doctors are treating children with genetic immune defects and pediatric AIDS, as well as using new drugs and therapies to fight infections.

St. Jude is a World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza Viruses in Animals and Birds.

St. Jude, in partnership with the University of Tennessee Cancer Institute, is a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), a not-for-profit alliance of 20 of the world's leading cancer centers, which is dedicated to improving the quality and effectiveness of care provided to patients with cancer.

St. Jude operates a stem cell transplant program that enables doctors to perform approximately 185 transplants per year.

St. Jude was the first facility outside the National Institutes of Health to receive federal approval for research involving human gene therapy.

The St. Jude faculty includes three National Academy of Sciences members: Peter C. Doherty, PhD, of Immunology; Charles Sherr, MD, PhD, of Tumor Cell Biology; and Robert Webster, PhD, of Infectious Diseases. Sherr, James Ihle, PhD, of Biochemistry, and Brenda Schulman, PhD, Structural Biology, hold the coveted title of Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators.

Since 1998, former St. Jude Director Arthur Nienhuis, MD, has served on the National Cancer Advisory Board. Nienhuis was appointed by the President of the United States to the board, which provides advice to the President, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the director of the National Cancer Institute.