IT’S TONIGHT: Does it seem like a cancer cure is “just around
the corner” – and has been for the past few decades?

If you, too, have wondered about this question we invite you to
watch a program, “The Truth about Cancer,” airing nationwide at 9
tonight on your local public television station. The 90-minute
documentary will be followed by a 30-minute panel discussion.

The program promises to take a look deep inside the cancer field
gauging how far we have come in this decades-old war and asking,
“Why does anyone still die of cancer?” “Is cancer the same deadly
killer it was 30 years ago – or are we making progress?”

The documentary was written, produced and directed by Emmy award
winning filmmaker Linda Garmon.

Part science, part personal catharsis, part character-driven
storytelling, the 90-minute documentary is narrated by Garmon, who
tells the moving story of her husband’s battle with cancer.

Over the course of the film, Garmon returns to the same
Boston-area hospitals at which her husband was treated and exposes
startling truths about survival rates of metastasized cancers and
the limited success of drugs and clinical trials. Interwoven
throughout are the stories of three additional cancer patients and
their families and doctors as they navigate the deeply personal
decisions surrounding the disease.

Garmon says, “This film makes it clear that it’s very much a
part of American culture to believe that if you fight hard enough,
you can beat cancer. But when it comes to having metastatic cancer,
your survival depends on the biology of your cancer cells and
whether they are susceptible to state-of-the-art treatment. In
sharing my husband’s story and the stories of other patients, I
hope to shed light on this important truth.”

The documentary is the third installment of PBS’s “Take One
Step,” a campaign offering programming and outreach tools to help
people take the first step towards better health.

As a complement to the broadcast, PBS recently launched a
comprehensive companion Web site featuring extensive information
about living with cancer, a list of pertinent local resources and
an online cancer-risk assessment tool from the Harvard school of
Public Health. Following its premier, the complete two-hour
broadcast special will be made available, free of charge, on the
Web site, PBS.org.