(Note: This is an expanded version of a blog entry I wrote for our work blog. Yay self-plagiarism!)
For those of you who don't kn

It seems if a celebrity or her loved one is diagnosed with an illness, it tends to get a lot of ink or television exposure.
For example, Jenny McCarthy has been talking about autism--her son Evan has the disorder. She's even written a book, called Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism, about her experiences.
McCarthy believes a vaccination Evan received caused his autism, and she's been speaking out about vaccines. On June 4 she led, along with boyfriend Jim Carrey, the Green Our Vaccines march in Washington, DC.It is wonderful McCarthy is taking a stand and starting a conversation about autism--especially because her celebrity gives her the ability to, while many other mothers do not have the fame, and therefore the power, to make their cause known. But stances celebrities take and things they say about a disease can have a major impact.
There hasn't been any research firmly proving certain vaccinations cause autism, and the questionable substance in the vaccines has been removed. McCarthy and Carey's rally called for "national health agencies to reassess mandatory vaccine schedules," according to Fox News. If this influences health agencies to do so, will children be missing out on necessary vaccines?
Lastly, the case that, to me, is the most important: Senator Ted Kennedy's recent brain cancer diagnosis. About a month ago, Sen. Kennedy discovered he had a malignant glioma. He has since had a successful surgery
After his diagnosis, I saw a massive amount of articles and information about brain cancer on the Internet. What is it, survival rates, how it affects a patient, new trials and therapies that are being tested.

This is all close to my heart -- for those of you who don't know, my mother was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, the most aggressive type of brain cancer, in spring 2007. (We're pictured below in my girl-mullet days. She swore to me it was not a mullet, but I beg to differ. Eeep!) It has been quite the rollercoaster ride for my family and I. My mom also had a very successful surgery (85-90% of her tumor was removed), last summer she had radiation treatments, and she is just finishing up a year-long round of chemo. Her tumor has not grown since the surgery; however, her quality of life has gone downhill. Post surgery, she was walking, cooking, even driving herself to her radiation appointments. Because of a few major setbacks, including a brain hemorrhage last August, she can no longer walk on her

Back to Sen. Kennedy: I truly feel for him and his family -- I know what they are going through and how scary it is. However, I'm grateful his diagnosis brought about more publicity and public awareness of this horrible illness.
But my question is -- why is this what it takes to get brain cancer in the mainstream media? Why does it take a celeb's diagnosis to bring any disease "into the spotlight?" So many commonfolk suffer daily from a variety of serious ailments, and if they are rare, sometimes it takes a celeb to get the disease its "time to shine." to remove the tumor, and is expected to start treatments shortly.
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