Americana: St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Some of the kids helped by St. Jude express their gratitude. Uploaded by rightwordsbooks.com.
Jude was one of the disciples of Jesus, and has been adopted by the Roman Catholic Church as the patron saint of desperate cases. It’s no wonder, then, that when entertainer Danny Thomas founded this hospital for children’s diseases, St. Jude was chosen as its namesake.
Marlo and Danny Thomas. Uploaded by danny-thomas.com.
That was in 1962 when the survival rate for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common childhood cancer, was 4 percent. Today, thanks in large part to the research conducted at St. Jude, the survival rate is 94 percent.
Some of the most extensive study of childhood diseases in the world is done at St. Jude. The Nobel Prize committee gave testimony to that fact in 1996 when a St. Jude physician was corecipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Doctors around the world consult with St. Jude researchers on their most difficult pediatric cases. Children from every state and more than 70 countries have received care in the Memphis facility.
But the most remarkable thing about St. Jude is that patients are admitted solely because of their need for the Hospital’s research protocols. Families never have to pay for treatment that isn’t covered by insurance, and those without insurance are never asked to pay. Housing for patients and immediate family members is also provided at no cost. The hospital has an extensive fund-raising effort to cover these costs and to assure that the finest researchers in the world will want to study and practice there.
Danny Thomas’s daughter Marlo explains how St. Jude works and how you can be a part of its future:
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What a wonderful thing Danny Thomas started, and for it to have continued to be operated with the same purpose and vision for all these years is truly a miracle. What a great cause.
i just was reading up on the great life of danny thomas and marlo who i loved in that girl im telling my age but hats off to all the fantastic things that they have done for all the children in the world words cant say THANK YOU enought for all the THOMAS’S have done as well as all the donations from people they know and the general public we love you marlo t.
One of the best charities in the world. The work done there trickles down to us all. Cancer affects us all in some way.
The dedication to research and freely given care is a model for all charities worldwide.
I fondly remember Danny Thomas as a comedian. Being fairly young when his TV show was on, I had perhaps never really enjoyed his singing talents. My baby Granddaughter is completely mezmerized by the Christmas Classic, “Cricket On The Hearth”. What a renewed sense of appreciation I have for Danny’s singing talents! She does her best to sing right along with him :o) What a legacy this man left in the St. Jude’s Hospital and Foundation . Thank You Marlo for carrying on your Father’s work, your family is a living testiment of his dreams.