Rainbow Babies Gift Will Create Brain Tumor Center

Thursday, July 19, 2007
Topics: Health
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The largest ever gift to Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital is going to the creation of a new Brain Tumor Center and to find a cure for the disease in children. ideastream's Health Reporter Lisa Ann Pinkerton has more.

25 years ago, 9-year-old Jennifer Ferchill died of a tumor tangled around her brain stem. Now, a Brain Tumor Center in her honor hopes to make Cleveland the place parents bring their children for treatment of the disease. Co-Director of the new center Dr. John Letterio says brain tumors have surpassed leukemia as the leading cause of childhood cancer, not from lack of effort he says, but because these tumors still remain a mystery.

John Letterio: They’re complicated in many ways and our lack of understanding of the causes of this cancers remains really at the base of our inability to advance on improving the outcomes.

Letterio says additional gifts Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital is raising for the new center will allow it to test out innovative new treatments, as well as bring advanced technology and talented physicians to the hospital.

Lisa Ann Pinkerton, 90.3.