Samuel Braslow ’15 publishes opinion essay in New York Times
Braslow majored in English at Carleton.
Samuel Braslow ’15 published a guest essay in the opinion section of the New York Times titled, “I Understand MAHA’s Appeal, but It Threatens My Life.”
It started as a pimple. In the summer of 2023 I noticed the tiny inflamed bump on the conch of my right ear. I didn’t think much of it; I was 30 and healthy. Then the pimple grew into a skin tag and began to bleed. By December, I had secured an appointment with a dermatologist. Two days later, the phone call came. I had melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.
Despite interventions from some of the best doctors in the field, the cancer has continued its implacable march, progressing from Stage II to Stage IV. What started on my ear now lives in my liver, lymph nodes and bones. During this time, the country’s public health infrastructure has undergone seismic shifts under the Trump administration — shifts guided by the slogan “Make America Healthy Again.”
These personal and political realities have collided. The administration has undermined the once bipartisan war on cancer, canceling or delaying hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer-related research and firing cancer researchers at federal agencies. And over the summer, just as I learned that my own cancer wasn’t responding to treatment, the Food and Drug Administration surprised many when it declined to approve a promising new therapy for treatment-resistant melanoma, one that I had hoped to take.