proposal for cancer research

לכבוד הרב פרופ' שטיינברג: הרב הלפרין מבקש ליצור קשר עמך בנוגע לשאלה זו.

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BS"D

Dear Rabbis/Doctors,

I am a Baal Teshuvah primarily via Aish Hatorah although there are others who initiated my interest to whom I owe great hakaras hatov.

After about 10 years in private practice as a patent attorney, I spent 10 years as a patent attorney within the pharmaceutical industry, the last six of which I were within a cancer drug development company. Towards the end of that period I was taking a great interest in the science more than patent law.

To make a long story short I started my own law firm and cancer research company and after seven years of research (many thousands of hours through the late hours of the night), primarily in the literature, I believe that I have identified an approach to treating solid tumors that may be extremely promising in the short term. This approach is of an intutitive nature that one would be surprised if it did not work extremely well, notwithstanding the inherent unpredictability of the human body's response. I believe a scientific evaluator on your behalf would conclude that this must be pursued with the utmost vigor.

Ever since this concept fell into my hands (about six months ago), I have been in emergency mode abandoning all income earning activities except those necessary to barely make ends meet. I am badly in debt over the years of research but not closed to giving this away if warranted to do the will of Hashem. My company has very little funding to do proper justice to this but I am hobbling along. I decided to makes disclosure under confidentiality agreement in order to be able to sleep at night.

I wrote it up and sent it to two top research oncologists. Although I am sure they did not critically evaluate it as much as they should have, they cannot see fault with it. Dr. Susan Bates, Head of Molecular Therapeutics at the National Cancer Institute in Washington was one of the individuals and she asserted that it was complicated but may warrant government funded clinical trials in children. After further evaluation I believe these complexities can be put to rest with modest scientific effort.

I am very concerned that I am not discharging my duty to more this forward even more rapidly. Perhaps I can get a lot done with the resources and the help that Hashem is already sending my way and perhaps things are unfolding as they should. But I don’t want to be wrong at the cost of the lives of others.

I keep asking myself whether I should put this technology into a new charitable foundation in the form of a patent pool that encourages others to put in technologies that will resolve the problem of cancer and other diseases more efficiently than I am able to alone with royalties to be shared commensurate with the value contributed by the other technology contributors who are like minded. This in not a small undertaking and right now might bleed a lot of the free time I have to devote to this.

Alternatively, I believe that a group of well-to-do "chaverim" to whom investment return may be important but pikuach nefesh is paramount may be the better route to go to move this along at the fastest pace possible and to ensure the treatment is not cost-prohibitive and that the potentially enormous revenues will come back to the Jewish people in the form of the various forms of Tzeddaka which they are normally prone to donate to. Our neighbors and friends across the street are well-to-do cardiologists and they started to invest but alot more could be done with more money.

Perhaps I am in a moment of chalishat daat that will dissipate but I think starting a dialogue that I can bring into play when needed to ensure that I am on the right path might be in order.

I found out your organization through someone who davens at our shul who met Dr. Steinberg who I am told is a Belzer chassid. My father, Alav Hashalom was a Belzer chassid and his father was a shaliach of the Belzer Rebbe before the war. The story of my father's personal trials before and during the war is very very sad and he was quite affected by his experiences. I feel a desire to connect back to my roots and perhaps, on a personal note, you can put me in touch with Dr. Steinberg.

Your guidance of any sort would be very much appreciated.

Thank you very much,

Z