Yesterday, Republican Presidential candidate Tommy Thompson announced his plan to devote "vast resources" to end breast cancer by 2015. As a fellow breast cancer husband, I applaud Mr. Thompson's desire to find a cure for the disease which claimed the life of my wife; Barb had inflammatory breast cancer, a particularly aggressive and relatively uncommon form of the disease.

There are hundreds of organizations and research centers around the world that are trying to tackle this enormous problem. A federal injection of money to the National Institute of Health for breast cancer research would be wonderful.

Last year we lost nearly 41,000 women in the United States to this killer disease. I think it is time that we use the power of the federal government to boost the activity of research toward finding a cure.