For
Immediate Release
“NBC Nightly
News” Anchor Brian Williams to Present Award in
New York at Nov. 15 Strolling Supper Benefit for Joan’s
Legacy Lung Cancer Foundation
(New York, NY – October 3, 2005) Robert L. Pollock,
an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal, will
receive the 2005 “Joanie Award” for excellence
in journalism related to lung cancer. The award and
$10,000 prize are given annually by Joan’s Legacy:
The Joan Scarangello Foundation to Conquer Lung Cancer.
Mr. Pollock won the “Joanie
Award” for a series of editorials about the tremendous
FDA-influenced challenges to cancer patients, including
lung cancer patients, in accessing potentially life-saving
drugs, including the targeted lung cancer therapy Iressa.
“Through a series of
editorials last year, Mr. Pollock shone a spotlight
on the struggle cancer patients face to get the drugs
that work for them,” said Patrick T. McNeive of
ABC News who is president of Joan’s Legacy and
chairman of the Foundation’s Joanie Award Committee.
“In the finest tradition of advocacy journalism,
Mr. Pollock proposed a new paradigm for the testing
of cancer drugs that would do away with the placebo
trials that many experts find ineffective and leave
countless cancer patients without drugs and with little
hope of survival.”
In 2003, Mr. Pollock was
a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the editorial writing category
for "his clear, compelling editorials on the Food
and Drug Administration's delay in approval of new cancer
drugs." That same year he won the “Special
Media Award for Helping Others” by the Abigail
Alliance for Better Access to Development Drugs. In
his 10 years with The Wall Street Journal, the Buffalo,
NY native has served as an editor and editorial writer
in the US and abroad.
“Through his efforts,
many cancer patients now have access to drugs that had
been unavailable to them because of government red tape
and oppressive FDA regulatory barriers,” Mr. McNeive
said.
The “Joanie Award”
is part of the awareness campaign of Joan’s Legacy,
created to honor the memory and mission of its namesake,
Joan Scarangello. She was a producer and writer who
appreciated quality reporting and believed that the
public needed more information about lung cancer.
WSJ Robert Pollock Wins 2005 Joanie Award
The winner was selected by
the Joanie Award Committee, made of up leading broadcast
reporters and producers including Lennart Bourin, Felicia
Patinkin, Libby Rager, Ben Sherwood, Robin Skolnick
and Jonathan Wald.
Mr. Pollock will receive
the “Joanie Award” from NBC Nightly News
Anchor Brian Williams at the Foundation’s Strolling
Supper benefit in New York on November 15, 2005.
Past winners include ABC
News Medical Editor Dr. Timothy Johnson, and NBC News
Medical Editor Robert Bazell.
Joan’s Legacy is named
for Joan Scarangello, a non-smoker who died at age 47
after a valiant nine-month fight with lung cancer. Joan’s
Legacy is committed to fighting lung cancer by funding
innovative research and focusing greater attention on
the world’s leading cancer killer. Funding $1.2
Million in new and cutting-edge research in just three
years, Joan’s Legacy is fast becoming recognized
as the “venture capital” source for ground-breaking
lung cancer research.
Lung cancer is the number
one cancer killer in the United States, taking more
than 160,000 lives each year. Yet lung cancer receives
less research funding than any other major cancer, making
the work of Joan’s Legacy even more compelling.
For more information about
the “Joanie Award,” the Foundation’s
research grant program or the Strolling Supper event
in November, or lung cancer itself please visit www.joanslegacy.org.
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