WASHINGTON – People know little about the deadliest form of skin cancer as it is a little-studied type.After his death, Martin Whatley’s classic rock ‘n’ roll guitar proved his last weapon against it.
Whatley’s stricken widow put up Whatley’s perfect 1964 Fender Stratocaster for auction on eBay, donating half the income for Merkel cell carcinoma research and the rest to pay his medical bills.She knew scientists didn’t have sufficient funding to study a killer so uncommon that few doctors identify it and know little how to treat it.
She coiled donating $15,000 last year to the University of Washington — not where her husband was treated, but where Merkel cell authority Dr.Paul Nghiem is making efforts to gather samples of patients’ tumors to classify the genes that fuel the cancer.Merkel cell carcinoma provides a miserable sight of the upsetting intersection of research dollars and the suffering wrought by uncommon diseases.
