If you haven't yet watched the Livestrong Presidential Cancer Forum, make sure to start from the very beginning, when Lance Armstrong happily points out that his team, along with MSNBC, collected "nearly 1,000 questions" for the Presidential candidates.
1,000 questions? What happened?
Is anyone else surprised by how SMALL that number is, particularly in comparison to the broad, sweeping statistics that Lance Armstrong used to open the cancer forum?
The Response to Robin Roberts' Breast Cancer
Take this metric for comparison: the day that Good Morning America co-host Robin Roberts announced on air that she had breast cancer, the ABC News Web site page devoted to her announcement logged over 600 comments for Robin before the end of the day.
And now, less than a month later, there are 8,000 comments for Robin Roberts, as you can see from the ABC News Web site screengrab above.
MSNBC's page to collect questions and videos for the Livestrong Presidential Cancer Forum has been up for over month now. Yes, indeed. It's harder to come up with a question for a Presidential candidate than it is to ping someone with a personal anecdote or virtual hug, but is it 8x harder?
There are millions of cancer survivors out there. Where are they? Snubbing the cancer forums along with most of the leading candidates, it seems.
We already know that many of the major candidates chose not to participate (Obama, Romney, Giuliani) in Armstrong's cancer forum -- old news and analysis from USA Today, political columnists, et al. But, I thought that this had the potential to be a historic opportunity for the cancer community to step up and share their stories, questions, advice in a national forum.
I'm dumbstruck. What's your explanation for the lackluster turn out on the cancer community side -- not the Presidential candidate side? Do you consider 1,000 questions from the U.S. cancer community impressive? I need help understanding this.
The Livestrong Presidential Cancer Forum continues tomorrow, with the Republican candidates.
For more on Lance Armstrong's cancer forum, visit our special section:
Livestrong Presidential Cancer Forum: Our Breast Cancer Community's Questions and Advice
