The Marie Keating Foundation slogan is Our Aim is to Enlighten not Frighten and the goals of the foundation are to raise money and make cancer education available for every person living in Ireland and beyond.

Irish singer Ronan Keating lost his mother to breast cancer in 1998, and along with other members in the Keating family, decided to start a foundation in Marie's name as a way to honor her and as a means of preventing other family members from feeling as lost and vulnerable as they felt from their own lack of cancer knowledge at the time of Marie's breast cancer diagnosis.

To spread their educational message about cancer, the foundation has established three Mobile Cancer Information Units which are based in the Eastern, Western and Southern regions of Ireland so that all residents in the Republic of Ireland will have free access to breast cancer information.

Each mobile unit is equipped with take-home printed information on colon, lung, skin, testicular, prostate, cervical, ovarian and breast cancer. There is a nurse onboard to speak with anyone privately about any personal concerns regarding cancer or for a relative, work colleague or neighbor. Dr. MyToe is an educational outreach program designed for senior level Biology students. The Marie Keating Foundation also presents cancer information on the foundation website. The Keating family has put together a very nice foundation website in cancer education.

It's sour grapes of some kind. That's all I can conclude after hearing what a Welsh physician had to say about cancer, cancer research, celebrities and money. Dr. Paul Walker is quoted as saying that a disproportionate amount of research money is spent investigating cancer because celebrities supporting anti-cancer campaigns bring too much attention to cancer and that the average person fears cancer when they should not worry. Dr. Walker, who chairs the Welsh public health association PHA Cymru, is in a certain position of power in medical matters, which makes his personal perspective all the more disturbing.

Irish pop singer Ronan Keating, an ex-Boyzone star, who lost his mother Marie to cancer, and is currently launching a Cancer Research UK awareness campaign in Newport, Wales, made a public comment of his own regarding Dr. Walker's insensitive and ill-informed statements on cancer:

"You don't knock charities that are doing good work. It is disgraceful that a doctor could say something like that. He (Dr. Walker) said that men and women in the street fear cancer more than they should - but if one in three people are being diagnosed with cancer, they have every right to be concerned. I am very disappointed in him. It is totally absurd that someone in his position could say these things."

From all the cancer survivors -- from all the families who have lost someone to cancer -- from the many who are working tirelessly to find a way to curb the near-epidemic numbers of cancer diagnosis -- thank you Keating, we could not have said it better.