Lance Armstrong

Cancer is a pretty common talking point for various sorts of celebrities. But nobody has grasped the essence of the disease with such profound understanding as Lance Armstrong. Here he is last week on Capitol Hill.

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What is interesting about Lance is that he is trying to do a number of things. First his LiveStrong foundation is trying to put out the message that cancer is a survivable disease. Then he is calling for the US Government to adopt some of the most boring, but ultimately the most sensible, strategies for cancer prevention. So he is suggesting that colon cancer screening for the low income population increases. Rather than demanding enormous increases in blue sky research for a cancer cure - although he'd like a bit of that too.

In a sense he is one of the first celebrities to really understand the modern meaning of the disease.