Of all things you don’t want to turn into a popularity contest, cancer funding is one of them

Rick Bangs, 51, likes to point out that the cancer he survived is the fifth most common cancer in the United States and the fourth most common cancer among men.

After researching his cancer, Bangs discovered that bladder cancer fell into some of the silent cancers in America — ones that are common and deadly, but don’t receive the same amount of attention and money as some highly publicized cancers.

Take, for example, lung cancer. It is the most common cancer in the United States and a very deadly one, but it gets an average amount of funding — $1,128 per new person diagnosed last year — from the National Cancer Institute (NCI).