Governor Reynolds, A Question
Cancer and the Crabtrees of Cerro Gordo County
On Tuesday, January 14th, Governor Kim Reynolds delivered her annual Condition of the State address. This brief writing is a review of neither her performance nor the substance of her address. I found it to be predictable, boring with moments of great annoyance, to me that is. Also, I hate the way she rattles off ranking after ranking for the state with rarely even a word of context or sourcing of the statistic. I guess Governor Reynolds wants to head off any effort to fact-check her statements.
But I digress. No, not a review, I just have one question, preceded by some background.
In her Condition of the State address she, eventually, spent a couple of minutes talking about cancer and Iowa’s alarming cancer rates. Here is an excerpt from the transcript of the address:
Tonight, I’m announcing a new partnership between Iowa HHS and the University of Iowa to establish a dedicated team of epidemiologists who will research the behavioral, genetic, and environmental factors that might be playing a role. And I’m asking the Legislature to appropriate $1 million to get their work started.
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, 2025 Condition of the State Address
Instead of bemoaning the fact that Governor Reynolds is late to the dance, let’s just celebrate the fact that she showed up at all. I’m being serious. This is, as far as I can find, the first substantive public statement Governor Reynolds has made on this issue. And she didn’t show up to the dance empty-handed. Neither Governor Reynolds nor Republican leadership in the Legislature have supported any funding whatsoever for research to get to the bottom of why Iowa’s cancer rates are so alarmingly high. The Governor announced that she is seeking $1 million to create a partnership between Iowa HHS and the University of Iowa to “establish a dedicated team of epidemiologists who will research behavioral, genetic and environmental factors…” behind soaring cancer rates in Iowa.
That proposal is not nothing. And I genuinely applaud Governor Reynolds for offering up an idea and backing it up with some funding, however meager it may be. In an evening address full of statistical rankings, many of them specious, the Governor mentioned Iowa’s rank among the states regarding cancer rates – #2. She also mentioned that Iowa is one of only two states where cancer rates are on the rise. My research says that Iowa is currently the only state where cancer rates are increasing, but West Virginia dances around the line a lot, some years increasing, some years decreasing, so I’ll give her that one, just to be kind and generous.
This was the only state ranking in her address that had a negative connotation, so some credit is due for that. But my, what an unstated manner in which it was revealed. Just think about it for a moment, #2 in occurrence of cancer of all types, which means there are 48 other states with lower rates of cancer, 48! One of two (maybe) with increasing cancer rates, which means that at least 48 states have decreasing cancer rates – 48 states, at least!
Here is my question:
Governor Reynolds, in your Condition of the State address you mentioned investing $1 million for cancer epidemiologic research across the state to crack the problem of Iowa’s alarming cancer rates. You also mentioned investing $450 million to upgrade broadband access, especially in Iowa’s rural broadband deserts. I do acknowledge the importance of universal broadband access, but do you really believe that broadband access is 450 times more important than finding out why so many Iowans are dying of cancer?
To be clear, I do not think Iowa’s cancer crisis is that much less important than broadband access. In 1984 when the world was being gripped ever more tightly in the grasp of the AIDS epidemic, the city and county of San Francisco spent some seven times more on services to those afflicted and on researching the disease than the State of California. That year and the next San Francisco’s funding also similarly outstripped that of New York City, where many more people were dying from AIDS. San Francisco’s investment in addressing the epidemic even outstripped funding appropriated by the federal government in those years.
San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, Supervisor Harry Britt and a host of other community and civic leaders understood that when Death comes for so many in our communities, it comes for us all. I am my neighbor. My community lives in me. Or as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Mayor Feinstein, Supervisor Britt and all those other San Francisco leaders back then, they understood that.
Alas, Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa does not understand. Thank you, Governor, sincerely, for bringing an idea forward on this issue. It is, as so many will cynically say, “a start.” But my answer to my own question is, NO, broadband access is not 450 times more important than Iowa’s cancer crisis. I eagerly and anxiously await your answer to my question.
[Author’s note] I will be sending this essay and my question to Governor Reynolds. I ask you to do the same. And if you would rather use a different example from the Governor’s budget proposals, please do. There are myriad examples in her Condition of the State and in her announced budget proposals. Pick one and create your own, unique version of the question I posted above. Believe me, it will make a difference, please.
I have written about the subject of Iowa’s cancer crisis before and urge you to take a look at those writings:
Turn Up the Volume on Iowa Cancer Rates
I will leave you with this passage, written-through for this post, from my previous post –
But we should also remember what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his Letter from a Birmingham jail; “... “This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied’…” The Iowa Governor and Legislature must come to understand what Dr. King was saying. Iowa’s cancer crisis cannot wait much longer and things that take time, things like research and gathering data, must begin very soon. Any other path will lead us to “Never.”
“And then there were six,” my sister Laura said. Makes me feel like we’re coming closer and closer to “Never” for the Crabtrees of Cerro Gordo County… john
The Crabtrees of Cerro Gordo County, circa July 1970. Five of the eleven people in this photograph have lost their lives, four to cancer. My father, Theodore “Ted” Crabtree also had cancer, but it was not the singular cause of his passing. Love you all, john
P.S. I am in this picture, lower left-hand corner. As are the other six remaining members of my family. We’re not in Cerro Gordo County anymore but we are still here.
I LOVE THIS PHOTO.